In 1958, the sculptor Jeremy Anderson showed two of his students a catalogue of work by H. C. Westermann, whose sculpture Anderson was familiar through their shared dealer, Allan Frumkin. The experience was revelatory to the two young artists, Robert Hudson and William T. Wiley and would impact their careers in different ways.
Since its “discovery” in 1965, the Slant Step has been the subject of four exhibitions and has become the catalyst for the assembly of works in all media.
In December of 1981, the gallery mounted its sixth exhibition of Wiley's work, including new paintings, drawings and sculpture completed since his first retrospective at the Walker Art Center a year prior.
Congratulations to the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art on the opening of their exhibition, William T. Wiley and the Slant Step: All on the Line, celebrating Wiley’s exploration of philosophical, environmental and psychological questions through art in all media available to him
Robert Arneson, Roy De Forest and William T. Wiley are included in a group exhibition at the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art. Gesture: The Human Figure After Abstraction presents the work of the first-generation artists of the UC Davis art department at a pivotal moment in art history. As part of what came to be known as the Bay Area Figurative Movement, Davis artists looked to abstract art while nurturing a distinctive identity for modernism.
Robert Arneson and WIlliam T. Wiley are included included in Slant Step Forward at the Verge Center for the Arts. The exhibition centers itself around the "slant step," an infamous slanted stool originally procured by Wiley back in 1965. Over five decades the slant step was passed around between artists from Northern California such as Bruce Nauman and Richard Serra, and went on to inspire countless works of art and literature, including an artists' book published in 1969 by Phil Weidman.
Roy De Forest and William T. Wiley are featured in West by Midwest at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. This exhibition illuminates the ways that contemporary art practices spread and develop by tracing the intersecting lives of artists who have migrated from the American Midwest to the West Coast since the mid-20th century.
For the innagural exhibition at the new Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis, Out Our Way explores the development of the revolutionary UC Davis Department of Art, founded in 1958. The exhibition revives the “spirit of defiant provincialism” which, in merely 10 years, propelled the program to be recognized as one of the most courageous and wildly inventive communities of artists working in the world. Featuring the work of Wayne Thiebaud, Robert Arneson, William T. Wiley, Roy De Forest, Roland Petersen, Manuel Neri, Ralph Johnson, Ruth Horsting, Daniel Shapiro, Tio Giambruni, Jane Garritson and John Baxter, Out Our Way is on view through March 26, 2017.
As part of the Tajan ARTSTUDIO program, a series of special exhibitions held at L'Espace Tajan, Paris, is a special exhibition focusing on artists of the Bay Area, from 1960-1990. Including the work of Robert Arneson, Joan Brown, Bruce Conner, Roy De Forest, Peter Saul, Mark di Suvero, Wayne Thiebaud and William T Wiley, it is the first exhibition of its scope and focus to be presented in Paris. A catalog with essay by Hilarie Faberman has been published for the occasion.
