For four decades, Bill Viola has created a profound portfolio of emotionally charged works with which audiences worldwide connect through subjects that investigate fundamental human experience.
Viola has been instrumental in the establishment of video as an important form of contemporary art, and his installations – total environments that envelop the viewer in image and sound – employ state-of-the-art technologies. Viola represented the USA at the 46th Venice Biennale in 1995 and his work has been the subject of large solo survey exhibitions at institutions including: The Whitney Museum of American Art (travelled to 5 venues) (1997–2000); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2006); and Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (2008); and Grand Palais, Paris (2014). Among his numerous awards, he received a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1989. He holds honorary doctorates from Syracuse University (1995), The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1997), and Royal College of Art, London (2004), among others, and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2000). In 2006 he was awarded Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Government, received the Catalonia International Prize in 2009 and the Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale in 2011.