Gerald Williams (artist)

Gerald Williams (born 1941 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American visual artist whose work has been influential within the Black Arts Movement, a transnational aesthetic phenomenon that first manifested in the 1960s and continues to evolve today. Williams was a founding member of the Chicago artists' collective AfriCOBRA. His work has been featured in exhibitions at some of the most important museums in the world, including the Tate Modern, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia.

In addition to his influence as a contemporary artist, he has served in the Peace Corps, taught in the public schools systems of Chicago and Washington, D.C., and served as an Arts and Crafts Center Director for the United States Air Force. In 2015, he moved back to his childhood neighborhood of woodlawn, Chicago, where he currently lives and works.

In 2019, Williams was awarded the Honorary Doctorate of Philosophy in Art by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, along with his co-founders of AfriCOBRA, Jae Jarrell, and Wadsworth A. Jarrell.