Hank Willis Thomas

Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976, Plainfield, New Jersey) lives and works in Brooklyn. He is a conceptual artist working with themes related to perspective, identity, commodity, media, and popular culture. His work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. 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. 

‍I AM MANY, his latest solo exhibition, is on view at Jack Shainman Gallery, Tribeca, through November 1st. 

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, and direct action.

Thomas was the 2022 U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts honoree. Additionally, he is the recipient of the Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship; The Guggenheim Fellowship; AIMIA | AGO Photography Prize; Soros Equality Fellowship; Aperture West Book Prize; Renew Media Arts Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation; and the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Award. 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 on the Boston Common in Massachusetts; REACH, made in collaboration with Coby Kennedy, at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago; Duality at The Underline in Miami, Florida; and The Truth Is I Love You at The Austin Public Library, Texas. Additional permanent public artworks include Unity in downtown Brooklyn; Love Over Rules in San Francisco; and All Power to All People in Opa-locka, Florida.

Thomas holds a BFA from New York University and an MA/MFA from the California College of the Arts. He has received honorary doctorates from MassArt; California College of the Arts; the Maryland Institute of Art; and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts, Portland, Maine.