Sharif Bey is a Syracuse-based artist from Pittsburgh, PA. Shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, Bey studied sculpture at The Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Slovakia. Later, he earned his BFA from Slippery Rock University, his MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and PhD (in art education) from Penn State University. Inspired by modernism, functional pottery, Oceanic Art and Art of the African diaspora, Bey’s works investigate the cultural and political significance of adornment and the symbolic and formal properties of archetypal motifs, while questioning how the meaning of icons and function transform across cultures and time.

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His awards include: The 2026 inaugural Spector Craft Prize, The United States Artist Fellowship, The Fulbright Scholarship, The Eben Demarest Award, The Pollock-Krasner Fellowship, and The New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. Beys works are featured in numerous public collections including: The Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.