WILLIAM KING (1925–2015)

The sculptor William King, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the former president of the National Academy of Design between 1994 and 1998, died earlier this month.

Born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1925, he attended the University of Florida and then enrolled in Cooper Union in 1945, graduating in 1948. After going to Rome on a Fulbright scholarship the next year, he went on to teach at the Brooklyn Museum Art School and the University of California, Berkeley, among other institutions.

A resident of East Hampton, he staged the majority of his New York exhibitions at the Terry Dintenfass Gallery. Fairfield Porter and Hilton Kramer wrote about his work in Art News and The Nation, respectively. King received many awards throughout his life, including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist Grant, and the San Francisco Arts Commission Award for Outstanding Achievement in Sculpture.

He also received honorary doctorates from the San Francisco Art Institute, the California College of Arts and Crafts, and the Corcoran School of Art, Washington, DC. In 2007, King was honored with the Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award given by the International Sculpture Center.