Hank Willis Thomas

Artist biography:

Born: 1976, New Jersey

Hank Willis Thomas is a contemporary African American visual artist and photographer. Thomas received his BFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts in Photography and Africana Studies and his MFA from California College of the Arts, as well as an MA in Visual Criticism. He has acted as a visiting professor at CCA and in the MFA programs at Maryland Institute College of Art and ICP/Bard and has lectured at Yale University, Princeton University, the Birmingham Museum of Art and the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris.

His work has been featured in many publications including Reflections in Black (Norton, 2000) 25 under 25: Up-and-Coming American Photographers (CDS, 2003), 30 Americans (RFC, 2008). His monograph, Pitch Blackness, was published by Aperture in 2008. Thomas has received a New Media Fellowship through the Tribeca Film Institute and he was served as an artist-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University.

He has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United States and abroad including Galerie Anne De Villepoix in Paris, the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg, the Studio Museum in Harlem, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford.

Thomas' work is in numerous public collections including The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, The High Museum of Art in Atlanta and the Museum of Fine Art in Houston. His collaborative projects have been featured at the Sundance Film Festival and installed publicly at the Oakland International Airport, The Oakland Museum of California and the University of California, San Francisco. Recent exhibitions include Dress Codes: The International Center for Photography's Triennial of Photography and Video, Greater New York at P.S. 1/MoMA.

Hank Willis Thomas is currently a fellow at the W.E.B. DuBois Institute at Harvard University and is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery in New York City.