William Christenberry
American, 1936 - 2016
Christenberry earned a BFA from the University of Alabama in 1958. While in school, he had already begun painting, and in 1959 earned an MFA degree in painting from UA and joined the art faculty upon graduating. In 1962, newly inspired by Evans, who encouraged him to focus on photography, William Christenberry moved back to the south and accepted a position as assistant professor of art at Memphis State University in Tennessee.
Monographs of his work include William Christenberry: Southern Photographs (1983); Christenberry: Reconstruction: The Art of William Christenberry (1996); William Christenberry: The Early Years, 1954 – 1968 (1996); William Christenberry: Art and Family (2000); William Christenberry (2002); and William Christenberry (2006). He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (1984); an Art Matters, Inc. grant (1994); and an honorary doctorate from the University of Alabama.
Christenberry’s photography was the subject of the 2006-2007 exhibition “Passing Time: The Art of William Christenberry” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. He is included in many important public and private collections, including the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA.; the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the George Eastman House, Rochester; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Person TypeArtist