Willie Birch was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on November 26, 1942. Throughout his career, Birch has chronicled his keen observations of the world around him. Deeply engaged in social criticism, his artwork dismantles artificial constructs of race and class, pointing to commonalities between visual and cultural forms throughout the world. Birch’s interest in the intersection of art and social justice began at a young age. In the late 1950s, while still in high school, he painted signs for protesters to carry at a local civil rights demonstration. As a student at Southern University New Orleans (SUNO), Birch participated in several civil rights demonstrations before enlisting in the United States Air Force from 1962 to 1965. Following completion of his military service in 1969, Birch finished his studies at SUNO, won two awards for his first art exhibition in Atlanta, Georgia, and moved to Maryland. In 1973, Birch completed his MFA degree at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). A visit to New York that year to see the Akhenaten and Nefertiti exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum sparked Birch’s interest in Egyptology and numerology, influencing his own art making. In 1975, Birch moved to New York City where he was artist in residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem from 1977 to 1978. In 1983, Birch was commissioned by the Public Art Fund, Inc., New York to create a mural for a public park. The following year, during a visit to St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, he noticed that papier-mâché was used to construct the crucifix. This personal discovery influenced Birch’s own adoption of this material for the creation of figurative sculptures that metabolize Pop culture and historical references. Birch received the National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowship in Sculpture from 1984 to 1985, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in sculpture in 1993. Birch’s practical and conceptual use of paper across sculpture, painting, and printmaking is a defining characteristic of his artistic practice. With this material choice, he explores complex and oftentimes loaded assumptions about value and cultural heritage. In addition to his work in sculpture, in the 1980s and 1990s, Birch created colorful, narrative “Folkloric” paintings and textdriven “Dialogue” paintings depicting his impressions of city life and current events in crisp forms and vibrant hues. In 1997, he permanently moved back to New Orleans where he created numerous colorful acrylic and charcoal portraits on paper documenting members of his community. In 2000, he translated his portraiture into color prints at the Tamarind Institute lithography workshop in Albuquerque, New Mexico. That year, Birch decided to remove all color from his palette and committed himself to working solely in black-and-white from that moment forward. Since then, his art has focused on capturing the vibrancy of the citizens and environments of his beloved hometown. Some of the most monumental examples of Birch’s black-and-white works were featured in the New Orleans Biennial exhibition, Prospect.1 in 2008 to 2009, and Prospect.5 in 2021 to 2022. From 2006 to 2008, the survey exhibition, Celebrating Freedom: The Art of Willie Birch, traveled to Acadiana Center for the Arts, in Lafayette, Louisiana; Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, in Scottsdale, Arizona; 40 Acres Art Gallery, in Sacramento, California; and Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, Louisiana. At once literal and allegorical—Birch’s poetic grisaille acrylic and charcoal paintings document vernacular architecture and subjects engaged in quotidian activities or celebratory rituals. They manifest as visual reflections of Birch’s understanding of humanity. Willie Birch has exhibited his work at the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Hammer Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA; Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ; Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC; Speed Museum, Lexington, KY; Hilliard Art Museum, Lafayette, LA; Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Cleveland, OH; Museum of African American Art, Tampa, FL; the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, AZ, and Fort Gansevoort, New York, NY among others. Birch’s work has been featured in New Orleans Biennial, Prospect.1 (2008-09) and Prospect.5 (2021-22). His work is included in the public collections of Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE; Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, MI; Hammer Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA; Legacy Museum, Equal Justice Initiative, Montgomery, AL; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; New Orleans, LA; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA ; San José Museum of Art, San José, CA; Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE; Speed Museum, Louisville, KY; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY among other institutions. Birch is the recipient of numerous awards and grants including the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation, Community Partnership Grant (2021); United States Artists Fellowship, James Baldwin Fellow (2014); National Conference of Artists (NCA) Lifetime Achievement Award Artist in Residence, RedLine Milwaukee, WI (2013); Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (2006); The Pollock Krasner Foundation Award (2006); John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in sculpture (1993); and the National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowship Grant (1989-90 and 1984-85). Birch was the artist in residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York from 1977-78. He has created several public art commissions. From 2026 -2029, the New Orleans Museum of Art and American Federation of Arts (AFA) will co-present the artist’s first comprehensive career retrospective: Willie Birch: Stories to Tell. The traveling exhibition will be presented by the California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; MOCA Jacksonville, Jacksonville, FL; and Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY. The retrospective will bring together groundbreaking works from the early 1970's to the present and will be accompanied by a catalogue, published by Yale University Press. Willie Birch is represented by Fort Gansevoort in New York City.