WILLIAM POPE.L (1955 - 2023)
Black People R V.

Lithograph on BFK Rives paper, 2021. 762x559 mm; 30x22¼ inches (sheet). Printers proof, aside from the edition of 12. Signed and numbered P/P 2/2 in pencil, lower edge. Printed by Brian Garner, Durham, NC. Published by Litho Shop, Baltimore, MD.

Multidisciplinary artist William Pope.L, also known as Pope.L, was a visual artist and educator whose practice used binaries to critique race and class in the United States. Through performance, video, drawing, and printmaking, he was able to probe the issues of the art world and the greater society.

Pope.L attended Pratt Institute from 1973 to 1975 and participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program from 1977 to 1978. He received a BA from Montclair State University in 1978 and received an MFA degree in visual arts from Rutgers University in 1981. He was included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial with his work Claim (Whitney Version), a large installation that incorporated raw bologna and photography. His art has been the subject of various exhibitions, including a 2015 exhibition at MOCA Los Angeles; Between A Figure and A Letter at Schinkel Pavillion, Berlin (2022); Instigation, Aspiration, Perspiration, a trio of complementary exhibitions organized by the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and Public Art Fund (2019) and Flint Water Project at What Pipeline, Detroit (2017). He was awarded the Whitney Museum Bucksbaum Award in 2017, the Joyce Foundation Award in 2012, the Tiffany Foundation Award in 2007, and the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship in 2006. He recently passed away on December 23, 2023.

Consigned to support the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation.