Deborah Willis (artist)

Deborah Willis (born February 5, 1948) is a contemporary African-American artist, photographer, curator of photography, photographic historian, author, and educator. Among other awards and honors she has received, she was a 2000 MacArthur Fellow. She is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts of New York University.

Biography

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Willis is the mother of Hank Willis Thomas. She is also known as "Deb Willis." She survived a diagnosis of breast cancer in 2001.

Her degrees include a B.F.A. in photography from Philadelphia College of Art in 1975; an M.F.A. in photography from Pratt Institute in 1979; an M.A. in art history from City College of New York in 1986; and a Ph.D. from the Cultural Studies Program of George Mason University in 2001. She was the curator of photographs and the prints/exhibition coordinator at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library between 1980 and 1992, after which she became exhibitions curator at the Center for African American History and Culture]] of the Smithsonian Institution for eight years. Between 2000 and 2001 she was Lehman Brady Visiting Joint Chair Professor in Documentary Studies and American Studies at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She then joined the faculty of New York University.

She co-produced the 2014 documentary film Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People, which is based on her book, Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present.

Awards and honors

Willis has received numerous awards and honors, including:

• 2005: Guggenheim Fellow, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
• 2005: Fletcher Fellow, Fletcher Foundation
• 2003: Honorary doctorate, Maryland Institute College of Art
• 2000: MacArthur Fellow
• 1995: Infinity Award for Writing, International Center of Photography.

Artistic and photographic works

As an artist and photographer, Willis is represented by Bernice Steinbaum Gallery in Miami and Charles Guice Contemporary in Berkeley, California. Her exhibitions have included:

• "Progeny," Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, Miami, 2008. The exhibition traveled as "Progeny: Deborah Willis and Hank Willis Thomas" in 2009 to New York and to Sacramento, California.
• "Regarding Beauty," University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2003, containing "photographs and autobiographical quilts."
• "Deborah Willis: Tied to Memory," Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, 2000.
• "Deborah Willis," Hughley Gallery & Objects, Atlanta, 1992, involving "small narrative quilts built around historical photographs, documents and family snapshots."

Curated exhibitions

Exhibitions that Willis has curated include:

• "Posing Beauty in African American Culture," showing Fall 2009 at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and touring in the U.S. through December 2012.
• "Reflections in Black," Arts and Industries Building, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 2000, on African-American photography. The exhibition in whole or in part traveled widely in the U.S. between 2000 and 2003.
• "Constructed Images: New Photography," which traveled between 1989 and 1992.