Amanda Williams is an artist who uses ideas around color and architecture to explore the intersection of race and the built environment. Through an interdisciplinary practice that brings spatial and aesthetic theory to bear on social issues, Williams is clarifying the role of the artist in reimagining the future of civic space. Be it the latent value in vacant houses, the expansive palette of what blackness is, the speculative beauty of tulip bulbs, or the social currency of childhood candies, Amanda has an ongoing practice of elevating seemingly mundane objects and spaces to a renewed and often reformulated status of importance.
Her work is in several permanent collections, including the Museum of Modern Art; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Amanda is co-creator of a forthcoming permanent monument to Shirley Chisholm in Brooklyn. Her breakthrough series, Color(ed) Theory, was named one of the world’s 25 most significant works of postwar architecture by The New York Times. In addition to being on the board of the Terra Foundation, Amanda serves on several other boards including the Pulitzer Arts Foundation. She is a founding member of the Black Reconstruction Collective. Williams has been widely recognized, including as a MacArthur Foundation Fellow. A graduate of Cornell University, she is based in Chicago.
