1953-present
Works in the Collection
Biography
Dawoud Bey was born David Edward Smikle in New York City’s Jamaica, Queens New York. He changed his name to Dawoud Bey in the early 1970s. He studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York from 1977-78, graduated with a BFA in Photography from Empire State College in 1990, and received his MFA from Yale University School of Art in 1993. In 1979, Bey’s series of photographs “Harlem, USA,” was exhibited in his first one-person exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem. He has since had numerous exhibitions worldwide, at such institutions as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Barbican Centre in London, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA, the National Portrait Gallery in London, and the Whitney Museum of American Art among many others. The Walker Art Center organized a mid-career survey of his work, “Dawoud Bey: Portraits 1975-1995,” that traveled to institutions throughout the United States and Europe. A major publication of the same title was also published in conjunction with that exhibition. Class Pictures: Photographs by Dawoud Bey was published by Aperture in 2007. A traveling exhibition of this work toured to museum throughout the country from 2007-2011. Currently living in Chicago, Illinois, Bey is a professor of art and Distinguished College Artist at Columbia College Chicago.