Faith Ringgold (October 8, 1930 – April 13, 2024) was a Black American painter, author, mixed media sculptor, performance artist, and intersectional activist, perhaps best known for her narrative quilts.
Faith Ringgold (born Faith Willi Jones; October 8, 1930 – April 13, 2024) was an American painter, author, mixed media sculptor, performance artist, and intersectional activist, perhaps best known for her narrative quilts.
Ringgold was born in Harlem, New York City, and earned her bachelor's and master's degrees from the City College of New York. She was an art teacher in the New York City public school system. As a multimedia artist, her works explored themes of family, race, class, and gender. Her series of story quilts, designed from the 1980s on, captured the experiences of Black Americans and became her signature art form. During her career, she promoted the work of Black artists and rallied against their marginalization by the art museums. She wrote and illustrated over a dozen children's books. Ringgold's art has been exhibited throughout the world and is in the permanent collections of The Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Arts and Design, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
Ringgold received over 80 awards and honors and 23 honorary doctorates.[53] She was interviewed for the 2010 film !Women Art Revolution.
Ringgold resided with her second husband Burdette "Birdie" Ringgold, whom she married in 1962, in a home in Englewood, New Jersey, where she lived and maintained a steady studio practice from 1992. Burdette died on February 1, 2020.
Ringgold died at her home in Englewood, New Jersey, on April 13, 2024, at age 93.
