Sonya Clark is an artist and the Winifred L. Arms Professor of Art and Humanities at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Previously, she held a University Professorship in the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University where she served as chair for the Craft/Material Studies Department for over a decade. She earned an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and was honored with their Distinguished Alumni Award in 2011. She holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she received an honorary doctorate in 2023.
Her first college degree is from Amherst College where, in 2015, she also received an honorary doctorate. In 2021, she was awarded additional honorary doctorates from Franklin and Marshall College and Maine College ofArt. Her work has been exhibited in over 500 museums and galleries in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe and Australia. Clark is the recipient of many awards including a United States Artist Fellowship, Anonymous Was a Woman Award, Rappaport Prize, Art Prize, Pollock Krasner Award, and an Art MattersGrant.
She been an artist at the Red Gate Residency in China, the BAU Camargo Residency in France, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency in Italy, the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in DC, the Civitella Ranieri Residency in Italy, Yaddo Residency in NY, Affiliate Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, Indigo Arts Alliance in Maine, and Black Rock Senegal Residency. Her work has been favorably reviewed in the New York Times, Le Monde, Sculpture, Art in America, Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post, Time, Los Angeles Times, Hyperallergic, Mother Jones, Huffington Post, ArtForum, PBS, NPR, BBC and many others.