About the Artist

Bill Beckley, is a photographer and Conceptual artist. Born in Hamburg, PA, Beckley attended Kutztown University, and earned an MFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in 1970. While there, he studied with found-object artist Italo Scanga, who introduced him to Bruce Nauman, Dan Flavin, Sol LeWitt, and then-curator at the Whitney Museum Marcia Tucker. Through this association, Beckley’s work was included in Art in the Mind in 1970, the first Conceptual Art exhibition in the United States.

During the early 1970s, Beckley was part of a group of conceptual artists that used images and fictional texts in what came to be known as Narrative Art. He soon began experimenting with color photography, drawing inspiration from advertising.

His work is part of the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Tate Modern in London, the Daimler Collection in Stuttgart, the Sammlung Hoffman in Berlin, and in the private collections artists such as Jeff Koons and Sol LeWitt.