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Philadelphia, PA | Curator-Led Tour: ‘Mickalene Thomas: All About Love’ at The Barnes Foundation
November 18 | 3:30 pm – 4:45 pm
Join ArtTable for a tour of Mickalene Thomas: All About Love on the East Coast debut of this major international survey of Thomas’ work. Meet us in the galleries of the Barnes Foundation, where ArtTable member Nina Diefenbach, The Barnes’ Senior Vice President and Deputy Director for Advancement will provide an introduction to the exhibition. At 3:45, our 60-minute tour with Nancy Ireson, Deputy Director for Collections & Exhibitions and Gund Family Chief Curator at The Barnes, begins.
About the exhibition: Mickalene Thomas: All About Love is the first major international tour focused on the work of pioneering artist Mickalene Thomas (American, b. 1971), whose influences range from 19th-century painting to popular culture. All About Love is co-organized by the Hayward Gallery, London, and The Broad, Los Angeles, and in partnership with the Barnes and Les Abattoirs, Musée–Frac Occitanie Toulouse. The Barnes presentation of All About Love showcases a selection of vivid artworks—paintings, collage, photography, video, and site-specific installation—that celebrates Thomas’s distinctive artistic practice from the late 2000s to the present day. Her work is characterized by spectacularly staged, rhinestoned, large-scale painted tableaux and bold, intimate compositions, decisively foregrounding Black femininity in abundant realms of visual pleasure, agency, and kinship. Whether in imaginative dialogue with canonical works from the history of art or playfully reckoning with popular culture, Thomas’s exuberant portraits offer an empowered vision of beauty and desire, formulated through a sensual, Black feminist lens. The Barnes presentation is curated by independent curator and scholar Renée Mussai.
About the Artist: Mickalene Thomas (b. 1971, Camden, New Jersey) is one of today’s most influential artists. Her innovative practice has yielded instantly recognizable and widely celebrated aesthetic languages within contemporary visual culture. Thomas completed her MFA at the Yale University School of Art in 2002 and a residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2003, and soon became known for her large-scale acrylic paintings of Black women in states of leisure and repose. Her confident and assured subjects are often depicted in domestic interiors from Black America, claiming the agency of womanhood while deconstructing the art historical canon. Outside of her core practice, Thomas is a Tony Award–nominated co-producer, curator, educator, and mentor to many emerging artists. Thomas’s work has become an undeniable force within the contemporary art world and an indispensable inspiration to younger generations of artists. She lives and works in New York.
Program Admission:
- ArtTable member: $25
- Friend of member: $30
- Not-yet-member: $35
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