Spotlight: Hank Willis Thomas

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 authors, critics, poets, peers, scholars, and beyond. In this iteration, the Spotlight features a new sculpture by Hank Willis Thomas and a text by Ashley James, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY.

Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976, Plainfield, NJ) is a conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to perspective, identity, commodity, media, and popular culture. Thomas's work has been exhibited globally, including The Portland Museum of Art, Portland, OR; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; and the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA, and Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain. Thomas's public art practice spans permanent artworks, including The Embrace in Boston, MA; Reach, in collaboration with Coby Kennedy, at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, IL; and Duality 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, D.C. Thomas holds a BFA from New York University, New York, NY and an MA/MFA from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA. He received an honorary doctorate from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA, 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.