Mickalene Thomas

Mickalene Thomas is a 2015 United States Artists Francie Bishop Good & David Horvitz Fellow, distinguished visual artist, filmmaker and curator who has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. She is best known for combining art-historical, political and pop-cultural references in her works and for her paintings embellished with rhinestones, enamel and rich acrylics that introduce complex notions of femininity and challenge common definitions of beauty and aesthetic representations of women.

Thomas earned her MFA at Yale University School in 2002 and from there completed residencies at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York and then the Versailles Foundation Munn Artists Program , Giverny, France. She has been awarded numerous art prizes for her works and leadership in arts and continues to inspire through her talent.

Thomas’s work us in the permanent collections of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as the Detroit Institute of Arts; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Smithsonian American Art Museum, among many others.