Hank Willis Thomas © Hank Willis Thomas. Photography by Jai Lennard
Spotlight: Hank Willis Thomas
SEPTEMBER 24, 2026-NOVEMBER 7, 2027
The FLAG Art Foundation’s Spotlight exhibition series includes new or never-before-exhibited artworks accompanied by commissioned pieces of writing. It is the hope of this series to create focused and thoughtful dialogues between the visual arts and critics, scholars, poets, etc. In this iteration, the Spotlight features Hank Willis Thomas and a text by Ashley James, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
About:
Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976 Plainfield, NJ) is a conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to perspective, identity, commodity, media, and popular culture. His work has been exhibited globally, including The Portland Museum of Art, Portland, OR (2019), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR (2020); and the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA (2024), and Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.
Thomas’s public art practice spans permanent artworks, including The Embrace (2023) in Boston, MA; REACH, (2023) in collaboration with Coby Kennedy, at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, IL; and Duality (2023) at The Underline in Miami, FL. Select collaborative projects include Question Bridge: Black Males and For Freedoms.
Thomas was the 2022 U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts honoree from the Office of Art in Embassies, Washington DC. Thomas holds a B.F.A. from New York University, New York, NY (1998) and an M.A./M.F.A. from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA (2004). He received an honorary doctorate from the CCA in 2024 as well as honorary doctorates from the Maryland Institute of Art, Baltimore, MD and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts, Portland, ME in 2017.
Thomas holds a B.F.A. from New York University, New York, NY (1998) and an M.A./M.F.A. from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA (2004). He received an honorary doctorate from the CCA in 2024 as well as honorary doctorates from the Maryland Institute of Art, Baltimore, MD and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts, Portland, ME in 2017.
Ashley James, Ph.D. is the curator of contemporary art at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY. James’s work merges curatorial practice with an academic background rooted in African American studies, English literature, and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. Prior to joining the Guggenheim, James served as assistant curator of contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum, NY, where she was the lead curator for the museum’s presentation of Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (2018–19); organized Eric N. Mack: Lemme walk across the room (2019); and co-curated John Edmonds: A Sidelong Glance (2020–21). James also served as a Mellon Curatorial Fellow in Drawing and Prints at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, where her work focused on the groundbreaking retrospectives of Adrian Piper (2018) and Charles White (2018–19), and has held positions at the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, and at the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, where she co-organized the exhibition Odd Volumes: Book Art from the Allan Chasanoff Collection (2015). She has contributed essays and research for books, magazines, and catalogues, including publications on Charles White, Palmer Hayden, and Howardena Pindell. James holds a Ph.D. from Yale University in English literature and African American studies.