Gerald Jackson (b. 1936; Chicago, Illinois) lives and works in Jersey City, New Jersey. Jackson’s history was outlined in an expansive and essential 2012 interview with his friend, the artist Stanley Whitney published as part of BOMB magazine’s ongoing digital Oral History Project.

After a stint in the army in the early 1960s, where he further developed his skills as a marksman, Jackson relocated from his native Chicago to New York’s Lower East Side, where he became a part of a community of vanguard artists and jazz musicians centered around Slugs’ Saloon—a now legendary jazz club on East Third Street that was active from the mid-1960s to 1972. Following his studies at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago, and the Brooklyn Museum School, in the mid-1960s Jackson began exhibiting his own work. He was represented by Allan Stone Gallery in New York from 1968 to 1990. 

Solo exhibitions have been held at Parker Gallery, Los Angeles (2022); Marc Selwyn, Los Angeles (2022); Gordon Robichaux, New York (2021); White Columns, New York (2021); Kenkeleba Gallery, New York (2020); gallery onetwentyeight, New York (2013); David Reed Studio, New York (2010); Alan Stone Gallery (1981 and 1971); and Ornette Coleman’s Artists House, New York (1974).

Jackson’s work has also been shown in the group exhibitions: Strike Gallery (1964); Afro-American Artists: New York and Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1970); New Black Artists (touring exhibition), Brooklyn Museum, New York (1971); Black Artists: Two Generations, Newark Museum, New Jersey (1971); Lamp Black: Afro-American Artists, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA (1973); Jus’ Jass: Correlations of Painting and Afro-American Classical Music, Kenkeleba Gallery, New York (1983); The Black and White Show (curated by Lorraine O’Grady), Kenkeleba Gallery, New York (1983); Notation on Africanism, Archibald Arts, New York (1995); The Search for Freedom, Kenkeleba Gallery (curated by Corrine Jennings), 1991; Gracie Mansion, New York (1985); among others. Recent group exhibitions include A Decade of Acquisitions of Works on Paper – Part II, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Fiction of Property I, Kienzle Art Foundation, Berlin; On the Bowery (curated by Loren Munk), Zürcher Gallery, New York; Maki-Tamura Gallery, Tokyo; Malerei – Aktion –Konzept / Painting – Action – Concept, Kunstmuseum Magdeburg, Germany; Family Theater (curated by Gerrit Gohlke), Brandenburgischer Kunstverein Potsdam and Kienzle Art Foundation, Berlin; Something to Look Forward To (curated by Bill Hutson), Phillips Museum of Art, Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Short Distance To Now – Paintings from New York 1967–1975, Galerie Thomas Flor, Dusseldorf; and shows at Rush Arts Gallery (curated by Jack Tilton) New York  and Tribes Gallery (curated by Thom Corn), New York.

Recent reviews of Jackson’s exhibitions have been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Hyperallergic, and Frieze.

Jackson’s work is held in the collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.