William Dickerson may be justly called the patriarch of the Wichita Art Association School. For forty-one years he not only administered the school’s affairs, he also taught a full range of classes including life drawing, lithography, watercolor and oil painting. Dickerson’s labors insured the success of a school, which for many years provided the city’s only formal art instruction alternative to the college degree programs. Through his teaching he linked the generation of Bruce Moore to that of the mature artists currently working in Wichita.

Dickerson studied and taught at the Art Institute of Chicago before coming to Wichita. He was welcomed into the artistic community here and became acquainted, through Edmund Davison, with the members of the Taos Society of Artists. Dickerson was the first artist to be invited to join the newly chartered Prairie Print Makers Society. He and his wife Betty Dickerson traveled extensively, making contacts with artists throughout the nation. The distinguished American realist painter Edward Hopper was among their many friends.

Dickerson conducted workshops in various media and seminars on art for universities and club groups throughout the Midwest. The Kansas Federation of Art commissioned him to make gift print editions and his works were exhibited in major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Chicago Art Institute, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.