{"id":6311,"date":"2023-07-31T10:16:33","date_gmt":"2023-07-31T17:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/portlandartmuseum.org\/?post_type=tribe_events&p=6311"},"modified":"2024-07-11T15:26:23","modified_gmt":"2024-07-11T22:26:23","slug":"hank-willis-thomas-all-things-being-equal","status":"publish","type":"tribe_events","link":"https:\/\/portlandartmuseum.org\/event\/hank-willis-thomas-all-things-being-equal\/","title":{"rendered":"Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Overview<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Throughout his career, Hank Willis Thomas (American, born 1976) has addressed the visual systems that perpetuate inequality and bias in bold, skillfully crafted works. Through photographs, sculpture, video, and collaborative public art projects, he invites us to consider the role of popular culture in instituting discrimination and how art can raise critical awareness in the ongoing struggle for social justice and civil rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This fall, the Portland Art Museum is honored to present the first major retrospective of this important artist\u2019s work. Organized by the Portland Art Museum and co-curated by Julia Dolan, Ph.D., The Minor White Curator of Photography, and Sara Krajewski, The Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal\u2026<\/em>features more than 90 works including early photographic series, recent sculptures based on archival photographs taken during historic 20th-century events, quilts constructed from commercial sports jerseys and prison uniforms, video installations, interactive two-dimensional and time-based works, and public art projects. In addition, the Museum has supported the creation of a new and monumental flag-based work addressing lives lost to gun violence in the United States in 2018 that will serve as the entry point to the exhibition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following its presentation in Portland, the exhibition will travel to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas (February 8 \u2013 April 20, 2020), and to the Cincinnati Art Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio (July 10 \u2013 October 11, 2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHank Willis Thomas deftly confronts the most critical issues facing us today\u2014racism, violence, inequality, injustice\u2014through a range of visually dynamic, approachable artworks,\u201d said Curator of Photography Julia Dolan. \u201cHis photographs, sculptures, and interactive media installations encourage thoughtful inquiry; they challenge viewers to acknowledge histories of struggle and the damaging legacies of oppressive systems without losing sight of the hope for meaningful change. The exhibition traces Thomas\u2019s multi-decade commitment to exploring that which divides us. It also forefronts his belief that confronting and acknowledging our collective past can help move us forward in constructive and collaborative ways.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The many works included in All Things Being Equal\u2026 <\/em>demonstrate Thomas\u2019s inventive exploration of photography, advertising, and modern art and their many sociocultural ramifications. The exhibition groups art works thematically to illuminate subjects that Thomas has treated with sensitive nuance throughout his career, including the human toll of gun violence, the impact of corporate branding and the commodification of individuals, and the ways advertising plays to myths and stereotypes of race. The exhibition also highlights Thomas\u2019s investigation of archival images from many sources and how he has applied strategies of appropriating and reframing texts, images, and materials to connect historical moments of resistance and protest to our lives today as a call to continue moving toward greater social justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Portland Art Museum visitors and passersby have already interacted with Thomas\u2019s work\u2014first in 2016\u2019s In Search of the Truth<\/em> (Truth Booth)<\/em><\/a>, a traveling collective work with artists Ryan Alexiev, Jim Ricks and Will Sylvester, inviting audiences to complete the sentence \u201cThe Truth Is\u2026\u201d while being videotaped, and more recently with the For Freedoms 50 States Initiative<\/a> banners promoting voting in the 2018 mid-term elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHank Willis Thomas is an artist who works in multiple mediums, including collaborative projects. Our For Freedoms partnership gave museum-goers a preview of his deeply human-centered approach, grounded in respecting each individual\u2019s voice and seeing each person as a whole being, not a stereotype or an \u2018other,\u2019\u201d said Sara Krajewski, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. \u201cIn both his solo work and his collaborations, Thomas asks us to reframe our perceptions of race, politics, history, and popular culture so that we can better understand and combat the systems that dehumanize us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A comprehensive publication accompanies the exhibition. Co-published with Aperture in 2018, the book features essays by the exhibition\u2019s co-curators, as well as new scholarship by Professor Sarah Lewis (Harvard University), and an interview with the artist by Dr. Kellie Jones (Columbia University).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Organized by the Portland Art Museum and co-curated by Julia Dolan, Ph.D., The Minor White Curator of Photography, and Sara Krajewski, The Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Hank
Hank Willis Thomas (American, born 1976). The Cotton Bowl<\/strong>, from the series Strange Fruit, 2011. Digital c-print. 50 x 73 inches. \u00a9 Hank Willis Thomas, courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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About the artist<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976, Plainfield, N.J.; lives and works in Brooklyn, N.Y.) is a conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to perspective identity, commodity, media, and popular culture.His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and abroad including the International Center of Photography, New York; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain; Mus\u00e9e du quai Branly, Paris; Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong, and the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Netherlands. Solo exhibitions of his work have been featured at SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Ga.; California African American Museum, Los Angeles; Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, Philadelphia; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va.; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio; The Art Museum at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, Ky.; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Conn.; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, N.Y.; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Md.; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Mo., and the African American Museum, Philadelphia, among others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His collaborative projects include Question Bridge: Black Males<\/em>, In Search Of The Truth<\/em> (The Truth Booth)<\/em>, and For Freedoms. In 2017, For Freedoms was awarded the ICP Infinity Award for New Media and Online Platform. Thomas is a recipient of the Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship (2019), Guggenheim Fellowship (2018), Art for Justice Grant (2018), AIMIA | AGO Photography Prize (2017), Soros Equality Fellowship (2017), Aperture West Book Prize (2008), Renew Media Arts Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation (2007), and the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Award (2006).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is also a member of the Public Design Commission for the City of New York. Thomas holds a B.F.A. from New York University, New York (1998) and an M.A.\/M.F.A. from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco (2004). He received honorary doctorates from the Maryland Institute of Art, Baltimore, and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts, Portland, Maine, in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2017, the artist unveiled his permanent public artwork \u201cLove Over Rules\u201d in San Francisco and \u201cAll Power to All People\u201d in Opa Locka, Fla. Thomas was recently chosen to design Boston\u2019s Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King Memorial, with MASS Design Group.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Related events<\/h2>\n\n\n