William King  (American, 1925) 

William King (American, b.1925) is an American sculptor. He was born in Jacksonville, FL, and grew up in Coconut Grove, Miami. He attended the University of Florida from 1942 to 1944 and then went to New York in 1945. He enrolled at Cooper Union and graduated in 1948. In 1949, he traveled to Rome on a Fulbright Scholarship.

Upon his return to New York in 1953, he taught at the Brooklyn Museum Art School for three years. King also taught at other institutions, including the University of California at Berkeley. He was president of the National Academy of Design from 1994 to 1998, and is an American Academy of Arts and Letters member. King's first solo exhibitions started in 1954 and were staged by the Alan Gallery in New York. Most of his exhibitions after 1954 were held at the Terry Dintenfass Gallery.

King has been heavily reviewed and written about. Fairfield Porter wrote a review for Art news in 1954 and another review in 1960 for The Nation. Hilton Kramer wrote several essays about King, and Gerald Nordland wrote a gallery exhibition catalog about King as an artist in 1994. King has won numerous awards, including the Sculpture Prize from Cooper Union Art School in New York in1948, the Margaret Tiffany Blake Fresco Award in 1951, the Augustus St. Gaudens Medal in 1964, the Hakone Open-Air Museum Distinction prize in 1980, a Gold medal from the National Academy of Design in New York in 1986, the Louise Nevelson Award given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York in 1995, and the Visual Arts Lifetime Achievement Award from the Guild Hall of East Hampton in 1997.

His work has been showcased at the Alan Gallery in New York, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, FL, the Alpha Gallery in Boston, the Montgomery Museum of Art in Montgomery, AL, the Jacksonville Art Museum in Jacksonville, FL, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, CT, the University of Nebraska, and the David Heath Gallery in Atlanta, GA. He lives in East Hampton, NY, with his wife.