Over the past two decades, British artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen (b.1969 in London, lives and works in London and Amsterdam) has acquired an outstanding reputation for his work. Major museums worldwide have devoted exhibitions to his award-winning œuvre, including Dia Art Foundation (2024), Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan (2022), Tate Modern (2020), the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2017), the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2017), Schaulager (2013), and the Art Institute of Chicago (2012). His project Year 3 was showcased at Tate Britain in 2019. McQueen received the Turner Prize in 1999, and he represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2009. In 2014, Harvard University awarded him the W.E.B. DuBois Medal in honour of his contribution to African and African American studies and in 2016, he received the Johannes Vermeer Award from the Dutch government.

McQueen is the director of five feature films, Hunger (2008), Shame (2011), 12 Years a Slave (2013), Widows (2018), and most recently Blitz (2024). In 2020, he made Small Axe, an anthology of five films about London’s West Indian community and, in 2021, Uprising, a 3-part documentary with James Rogan, about the New Cross Fire in London in 1981. McQueen won the Oscar for best motion picture for 12 Years a Slave at the Academy Awards in 2014. He was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2002 and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2011 for achievements in both the fine arts and filmmaking and was knighted in the 2020 New Year Honours list. Most recently, McQueen and his wife Bianca Stigter were awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Amsterdam for their joint project Occupied City (2024). McQueen has been appointed Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University for the 2025–2026 academic year.