San Gimignano
Beijing
Les Moulins
Habana
Roma
Sao Paulo
Paris
Hank Willis Thomas (born in 1976, Plainfield, New Jersey, USA) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY as 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, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Musée du quai Branly, Hong Kong Arts Centre, and the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art.
His collaborative projects include Question Bridge: Black Males; In Search Of The Truth (The Truth Booth); The Writing on the Wall; The Gun Violence Memorial Project; and For Freedoms, an artist-led organization that models and increases creative civic engagement, discourse & direct action.
Thomas was the 2022 U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts honoree from the Office of Art in Embassies, Washington DC. Additionally, he is the recipient of the Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship (2019), The Guggenheim Fellowship (2018), AIMIA | AGO Photography Prize (2017), the 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). He is a former member of the Public Design Commission for the City of New York.
Thomas’s public art practice includes permanent artworks around the country, including The Embrace (2023) on the Boston Common in Boston, MA; REACH (2023) made in collaboration with Coby Kennedy, at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, IL; Duality (2023) at The Underline in Miami, FL; and The Truth is I Love You, at The Austin Public Library, Austin, TX. Additional permanent public artworks include Unity in Downtown Brooklyn, NY; Love Over Rules in San Francisco, CA; and All Power to All People in Opa Locka, FL.
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.
