August 25, 2021 Dear MCAD Community, It is with great sadness that I share news of the passing of artist Peter Williams, MCAD alum from the class of 1975. Throughout his nearly five decades of work as a painter, Peter chronicled current and historical events, interspersing pictorial narratives with personal anecdotes and fictional characters to create vibrant paintings about the diverse experiences of Black Americans. With boldness and humor, his work tackled unsettling subjects such as police brutality, lynching, slavery, and mass incarceration, using cultural criticism to retell the history of America. A celebrated painter who earned his MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art, Peter was the recipient of a well-deserved list of honors, including a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2021 Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize, and the 2020 Artists’ Legacy Foundation Artist Award. Peter was equally proud of his work as an educator, having spent seventeen years on the faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit and fifteen years at the University of Delaware where he was a senior professor in the Fine Arts Department. Peter was the embodiment of a creative, cultural leader. His work never shied away from topics that were controversial, uncomfortable, and at the same time, critically important for us as a society to address. Through his work Peter spoke of a world filled with both whimsy and trauma in equal measure and created a window into the African-American experience. We were fortunate to be able to celebrate Peter earlier this year, as we honored him with the 2021 MCAD Alumni Lifetime Achievement Award. I had the pleasure and privilege to hold a conversation with him about his life and work, and which I invite you to revisit today to honor him once again. All my best, Sanjit