Bill Viola received his B.F.A. in Experimental Studios from Syracuse University in 1973 and currently lives and works in Long Beach, California with Kira Perov, his wife and long-time collaborator.

Viola has exhibited works and established relationships with some of the world’s most prestigious museums and institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, which in 1997 organized an exhibition entitled Bill Viola: A 25-Year Survey; the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin and Guggenheim Museum, New York; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the National Gallery, London; the Fondación “La Caixa,” Madrid; the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; the Opéra National de Paris, Bastille; the Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles; and the Avery Fisher Hall at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts in New York.

Viola is the recipient of numerous prestigious national and international awards and honors, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1989 and the first Medienkunstpreis in 1993. He holds honorary doctorates from Syracuse University (1995), The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1997), California Institute of the Arts (2000), Royal College of Art, London (2004) among others, and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000.