Mickalene Thomas is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist whose work has yielded instantly recognizable and widely celebrated aesthetic languages within contemporary visual culture. She is known for her elaborate portraits of Black women composed of rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel. Not only do her masterful mixed-media paintings, photographs, films and installations command space, they occupy eloquently while dissecting the intersecting complexities of black and female identity within the Western canon.
Outside of her core practice, Thomas is a Tony Award nominated co-producer, curator, educator, and mentor to many emerging artists. Apart from her own monumental solo shows, she simultaneously curates exhibitions at galleries and museums and collaborates with corporations and luxury brands. In 2023, she became the first Black femme artist to have a scholarship in her name at the Yale School of Art. She has also been the recipient of numerous prizes, grants, and honors including Gordon Parks Foundation (2024), LA LGBT’s 2024 Vanguard Award, the Creative Capital Wild Futures: Art, Culture, Impact Award (2024); Hirshhorn Artist x Artist New York Gala honoree (2023); the Pratt Institute Legends Award (2022); Rema Hort Mann Foundation 25th Anniversary honoree (2022); Artistic Impact Award, Newark Museum (2022); Glass House 15th Anniversary Artist of the Year (2022); Yale School of Art Presidential Visiting Fellow in Fine Arts (2020); Legend in Residence Award, Bronx Museum (2020); Pauli Murray College Associate Fellow at Yale University (2020); Appraisers Association of America, Award for Excellence in the Arts, (2019); Meyerhoff-Becker Biennial Commission at Baltimore Museum of Art (2019). In 2018, she received an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from the New York Academy of Art and, in 2015, she was a United States Artists Francie Bishop Good & David Horvitz Fellow. Thomas is also the Co-Founder of SOULAS House, a cultural hub and retreat for Black women, Co-Founder in Sock Factory Arts, the Co-Founder of Pratt>FORWARD and founder of Art>FORWARD Artist in the Market incubator for post-graduate students.
Work by Thomas is in the collections of numerous institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum; Studio Museum of Harlem, New York; International Center of Photography, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C.; Art Institute of Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles among others. Thomas serves on the Board of the Trustees for the Brooklyn Museum, A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham, the Romare Bearden Foundation, and The Last Resort.
In May 2024, the touring exhibition Mickalene Thomas: All About Love opened at The Broad. Co-organized by the Hayward Gallery, London and The Broad and in partnership with the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, Mickalene Thomas: All About Love is the first major international tour of Thomas’ work. The show marked its debut at The Broad with over 80 works by the artist over the last 20 years.
Photo credit: Mickalene Thomas
