Michael B. Platt

Long known as a printmaker, Platt later preferred the more encompassing designation, “imagemaker.” His artwork turned to digital imagery and book art that combined image and poetry—fragments, allowing us glimpses of our selves. He created artwork that centers on figurative explorations of life’s survivors, the marginalized, referencing history and circumstance in the rites, rituals and expressions of our human condition.

Platt exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally. Numerous private collections have his art in their permanent holdings, as do the Smithsonian American Art Museum; the Library of Congress’ Prints and Photographs Collection and its Rare Books and Special Collections; the Schomburg Research Center in Black Culture of the New York Public Library; the Yale University Art Gallery; the Harris Poetry Collection of the Rockefeller Library of Brown University; the David C. Driskell Center Collection of the University of Maryland; and the Hampton University Art Museum.

Platt was a 2007 recipient of the prestigious Franz and Virginia Bader Fund Grant. He taught at the Alexandria Campus of Northern Virginia Community College for more than 30 years and at Howard University for more than ten years. He earned degrees in fine art at the Columbus School of Art, in Ohio, and Howard University.