Six women artists are among 25 people selected by the MacArthur Foundation to receive prestigious 2022 MacArthur fellowships (known as ‘genius grants’) in recognition of their extraordinary creativity and promise to advance the future of their fields.
These six women whose pioneering work brings insight and inspiration — a literary historian, a plant ecologist, three musicians, and an architect — will each receive $800,000, a no-strings-attached award as an investment in their potential.
“The 2022 MacArthur fellows are architects of new modes of activism, artistic practice, and citizen science,” says MacArthur Fellows Director, Marlies Carruth. “They are excavators uncovering what has been overlooked, undervalued, or poorly understood. They are archivists reminding us of what should survive.”
Congratulations Amanda Williams, Artist and Architect!
Chicago native Amanda Williams’ work revolves around “reimagining public space to expose the complex ways that value, both cultural and economic, intersects with race in the built environment,” per the Foundation’s website.
Her work explores spatial inequities by visualizing the ways urban planning, zoning, development, and disinvestment impact the lives of everyday residents, particularly in African American communities.
For her best-known project, Color(ed) Theory (2014–2015), Amanda, along with her family and friends, painted eight homes slated for demolition in Chicago’s predominantly Black Englewood neighborhood in bright colors. In 2021, she imagined new social uses for the Museum of Modern Art’s main atrium in Embodied Sensations.
© Reanne Rodrigues (12/16/22) — Special for FF2 Media
LEARN MORE / DO MORE
To learn more about Amanda Williams, please visit the MacArthur site here.
CREDITS & PERMISSIONS
Featured photo courtesy of John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
