Reba White Williams

Last updated

Reba White Williams
RebaWhiteWilliams2.jpg
Born (1936-05-21) May 21, 1936 (age 87)
Gulfport, Mississippi, U.S.
Occupation Novelist
LanguageEnglish
NationalityAmerican
Education Duke University (BA)
Harvard Business School (MBA)
Hunter College (MA)
CUNY Graduate Center (PhD)
Genre Mystery, Crime fiction, Cozy mystery
SpouseDave H. Williams
Website
www.rebawhitewilliams.com

Reba White Williams (born May 21, 1936), is an American author, philanthropist, and expert on fine art prints. As a novelist, her influences include Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. She and her husband, Dave H. Williams, built the world's largest private collection of American prints; [1] they also founded the Print Research Foundation. She and Dave Williams are also co-creators of the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction. [2] [3] [4]

Contents

White Williams was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, and grew up in Mississippi, Tennessee, and North Carolina. After moving to New York City, she worked as a library assistant/research analyst for McKinsey & Company, [5] vice-president and securities analyst for Mitchell, Hutchins, [5] contributing editor for Institutional Investor magazine , [5] [1] and director of special projects and member of the board of directors at Alliance Capital Management. [6]

Education

Reba White Williams received her high school diploma from Saint Mary's School in Raleigh, North Carolina, and attended Duke University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. She later earned an MBA at Harvard Business School in 1970, one of only 30 women in her class, [1] and an M.A. in art history from Hunter College. She was awarded a Ph.D. in art history from the CUNY Graduate Center, where her dissertation focused on the Weyhe Gallery and its role in American printmaking between the wars, 1919–1940. She also holds an M.A. in fiction writing from Antioch University. She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from CUNY Graduate Center in June 2016. [7]

Career

Williams spent nine years with McKinsey & Company, where her assignments included projects in London and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. After completing her MBA at Harvard Business School, she joined Mitchell Hutchins, Inc., as a securities analyst. She served five years as contributing editor of Institutional Investor magazine .

From 1991 to 2001, Williams served as director of special projects for Alliance Capital Management, [8] where she was also a member of the board of directors.

In 1999, White Williams ran unsuccessfully for the New York City City Council in District 4. [9] [10] [11]

Since 2001, Williams has worked as a full-time writer and researcher. Her articles have appeared in business periodicals and art journals, including American Artist, Business and Society, Financial Analysts Journal , Journal of the Print World, Mystery Readers Journal , [12] Print Collectors Newsletter, Print Quarterly , South Magazine, and The Tamarind Papers. [13]

Novels

In 1975, Reba White Williams and Dave H. Williams began to collect American fine-art prints, focusing on the first half of the twentieth century. Over the next 33 years, utilizing Williams's research skills, they built a collection of more than 5,000 prints. Between 1987 and 2009, the Williamses organized, researched and oversaw the circulation of 18 exhibitions from the collection that traveled to more than 100 museums in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe, and Japan.

The Williamses created the Print Research Foundation in 1994 as a research and study facility on American prints. In December 2008, Reba and Dave Williams donated their American print collection of more than 5,200 works and the Print Research Foundation and its facilities (the building, library, and archives) to the National Gallery of Art. [15] The collection was described as "unrivaled in scope," and Gallery Director Earl A. Powell III called it "a transformational acquisition". [16] [17] [18]

The annual Reba and Dave Williams Prize was created in 1993 for outstanding essays on American printmaking, as judged by the Editor and Editorial Board of Print Quarterly. The prize was last awarded in 2006. [19] The couple also funded the documentary All About Prints, which aired on PBS stations in 2009.

Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction

Since 2007, Reba White Williams and Dave H. Williams have sponsored the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction, named after the journalist and author Willie Morris. The award is given to a novel set in one of the original eleven Confederate States of America that reflects the spirit of Morris's work and stands out for the quality of its prose, its originality, its sense of place and period, and the appeal of its characters.

An independent panel of judges votes on the award from books submitted for consideration. Recipients of the award include:

Honors and awards

Williams has served on the Print Committees of The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and The Whitney Museum. She served on the editorial board of Print Quarterly , and was named an Honorary Keeper of American Prints by the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge University. Williams also served as president of the New York City Art Commission, [23] and as vice chairman of the New York State Council on the Arts. [24]

She has also received awards, including:

Related Research Articles

William Weaks Morris was an American writer and editor born in Jackson, Mississippi, though his family later moved to Yazoo City, Mississippi, which he immortalized in his works of prose. Morris' trademark was his lyrical prose style and reflections on the American South, particularly the Mississippi Delta. In 1967 he became the youngest editor of Harper's Magazine. He wrote several works of fiction and nonfiction, including his seminal book North Toward Home, as well as My Dog Skip.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anni Albers</span> German-American textile artist (1899–1994)

Anni Albers was a German textile artist and printmaker credited with blurring the lines between traditional craft and art.

Besides surface qualities, such as rough and smooth, dull and shiny, hard and soft, textiles also includes colour, and, as the dominating element, texture, which is the result of the construction of weaves. Like any craft it may end in producing useful objects, or it may rise to the level of art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harry Sternberg</span> American painter

Harry Sternberg (1904–2001), was an American painter, printmaker and educator. He taught at the Art Students League of New York, from 1933 to c. 1966.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">June Wayne</span>

June Claire Wayne was an American painter, printmaker, tapestry innovator, educator, and activist. She founded Tamarind Lithography Workshop (1960–1970), a then California-based nonprofit print shop dedicated to lithography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eleanore Mikus</span> American artist (1927-2017)

Eleanore Mikus was an American artist who began painting in the late 1950s in the Abstract Expressionist mode. By the early 1960s, she was creating monochromatic paintings with geometric patterns that according to Luis Camnitzer, “could be seen as conforming to the Minimalist aesthetic of the era while emphatically contradicting that style’s emotional distance and coldness.” In 1969, she began painting simple, cartoon-like images in bold, colorful strokes that anticipated Neo-Expressionism of the early 1980s. In the mid-1980s, Mikus resumed creating her abstract works. Since 1961, she has also been creating works of folded paper in which the “folds” make lines or textures that become integral to the material itself.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Willie Cole</span> American sculptor

Willie Cole is a contemporary American sculptor, printer, and conceptual and visual artist. His work uses contexts of postmodern eclecticism, and combines references and appropriation from African and African-American imagery. He also has used Dada’s readymades and Surrealism’s transformed objects, as well as icons of American pop culture or African and Asian masks.

William Henry Gerdts Jr. was an American art historian and professor of Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center. Gerdts was the author of over twenty-five books on American art. An expert in American Impressionism, he was also well known for his work on nineteenth-century American still life painting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tamarind Institute</span> Lithography workshop currently at the University of New Mexico

Tamarind Institute is a lithography workshop created in 1960 as a division of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM, United States. It began as Tamarind Lithography Workshop, a California non-profit corporation founded by June Wayne on Tamarind Avenue in Los Angeles in 1960. Both the current Institute and the original Lithography Workshop are referred to informally as "Tamarind."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liliana Porter</span> Argentine artist (born 1941)

Liliana Porter is an Argentine contemporary artist working in a wide variety of media, including photography, printmaking, painting, drawing, installation, video, theater, and public art.

Laylah Ali (born 1968) is a contemporary visual artist known for paintings in which ambiguous race relations are depicted with a graphic clarity and cartoon strip format.

Louise Kramer was an American artist who was known for working in a wide range of media, from printmaking to drawing, sculpture, and site-specific installation.

Margo Humphrey is an American printmaker, illustrator and art teacher. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Stanford after earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the California College of Arts and Crafts in printmaking. She has traveled in Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean, and Europe and has taught in Fiji, Nigeria, Uganda, and the University of Maryland. As a printmaker, she is known for her "bold, expressive use of color and freedom of form", creating works that are "engaging, exuberant and alive." Her work is considered to be "in the forefront of contemporary printmaking."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jolán Gross-Bettelheim</span> Hungarian artist active in New York 1925 to 1956

Jolán Gross-Bettelheim was a Hungarian artist who lived and worked in the United States from 1925 to 1956, before returning to Hungary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Willie Birch</span> African American artist

Willie Birch is an American visual artist who works in a variety of mediums including drawing, painting, and sculpture. Birch was born in New Orleans, and currently lives and works in New Orleans. He completed his BA at Southern University in New Orleans, and received an MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sylvia Wald</span>

Sylvia Wald was an American visual artist. Born in Philadelphia and educated at Moore Institute of Art, she began as a painter in the style of the American social realist school, before turning to Abstract Expressionism through her pioneering work in silk screening and sculptural collage. She has been noted for her "wide range of expression, diversity of media and technical excellence."

Carole Marie Byard was an American visual artist, illustrator, and photographer. She was an award-winning illustrator of children's books, and the recipient of a Caldecott Honor, as well as multiple Coretta Scott King Awards.

Alma Lucile Land Lacy was an American painter and printmaker.

Bertha Mae Landers (1911–1996) was an American painter and printmaker.

William Thacker McBride Jr. was an African-American artist, designer and collector. McBride began his career in the 1930s in the circles of black art collectives and artistic opportunities afforded by the Works Progress Administration. He would ultimately leave his mark in Chicago as a driving force behind the South Side Community Art Center. McBride distinguished himself as a teacher, as a cultural and political activist, and as a collector of African art and artwork by black artists of his generation.

This is a timeline of 20th Century printmaking in America.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "metronc.com". www.metronc.com. Archived from the original on March 22, 2012. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  2. "Award for Southern Fiction Expands to Middle Grade" . Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  3. "A Short Time To Stay Here Awarded Willie Morris Award For Southern Fiction - Lincoln Herald". lincolnherald.net. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  4. Gibson, Janis. "Collector Reba White Williams finds mystery in the art world". Archived from the original on December 13, 2013.
  5. 1 2 3 "SEC Info - Ibero-America Fund Inc - 'DEF 14A' for 8/24/95". www.secinfo.com. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  6. "Subscription Center". PIOnline. December 14, 2006. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  7. "America's First Lady, Michelle Obama, New York City's First Lady Chirlane McCray and Ford Foundation President Darren Walker Are Among Outstanding and Inspiring Leaders to Address CUNY Graduates and Receive Honors – CUNY Newswire". www1.cuny.edu. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  8. Dunlap, David W. (December 11, 1998). "Arts Agency Loses Leader In a Struggle Over Power". The New York Times. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  9. Board, New York City Campaign Finance. "New York City Campaign Finance Board: The 1999 Voter Guide: The Candidates". www.nyccfb.info. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  10. Hicks, Jonathan P. (November 3, 1999). "THE 1999 ELECTIONS: CITY COUNCIL; Though Heavily Outspent by Opponent, Democrat Wins Easily in East Side Race". The New York Times. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  11. "Endorsements for Tuesday's City Election". The New York Times. October 29, 1999. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  12. "This page has moved". www.mysteryreaders.org. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  13. "Tamarind Institute of Lithography - The Tamarind Papers: A Journal of the Fine Print". tamarind.unm.edu. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  14. "RESTRIKE by Reba White Williams - Kirkus Reviews" . Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  15. "Prints". Nga.gov. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  16. "National Gallery of Art | Press Office". Archived from the original on April 2, 2013. Retrieved December 10, 2013.
  17. Zak, Dan (January 3, 2009). "Couple's Gift Boosts Print Holdings at National Gallery of Art" . Retrieved March 5, 2018 via www.washingtonpost.com.
  18. "Conn. Donors Give Lots To National Gallery of Art". January 5, 2009. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  19. "Print Quarterly: The Reba and Dave Williams Prize". www.printresearchfoundation.org. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  20. "Tom Piazza's 'City of Refuge' wins Willie Morris Award" . Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  21. Friddle, Mindy (June 29, 2010). "The Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction" . Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  22. "Literary Friday - Deep South Magazine". August 10, 2012. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  23. Kennedy, Randy (March 24, 1999). "PUBLIC LIVES; Foe of Bunny Sculptures and Weasel Words". The New York Times. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  24. Miller, Judith (September 18, 1997). "New York Arts Council Wins 15 Percent Increase". The New York Times. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  25. "Subscription Center". PIOnline. December 13, 2006. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  26. "Gold Medal Gala - Spanish Institute - New York". spanishinstitute.org. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  27. "The Graduate Center to Award Three Honorary Degrees and President's Distinguished Alumni Medal". www.gc.cuny.edu. Retrieved March 5, 2018.