Juneteenth at the Blockson Collection

Tuesday, June 17, 2025, 3:00 PM

Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, Temple University Libraries

Visions of Black Life: Honoring the Johnson Publishing Company

“Ebony and Jet created the greatest archive of the African American experience…” ---Hank Willis Thomas
 

Join us for a Juneteenth Celebration featuring Hank Willis Thomas.

Visions of Black Life: Honoring the Johnson Publishing Company reimagines the Johnson Publishing Company Archive. Using the Johnson Publishing Company digital archive, Hank Willis Thomas will address the making and uses of photographic archives, the narratives they tell, and the parameters that define them as objects of study.

This author talk will explore the range of ideas and methods used by critical thinkers in addressing the field of Black visual studies and to familiarize them with the work of activists, scholars and artists working in this area. The practice of Black visual studies entails the critical evaluation of historical images in multiple realms of culture: migration, art, new media, activism, medical humanities, and politics. The construction of beauty and style, gendered images, identity, race, and Black women activists as icons in music and popular culture will also be considered. 

Participants will investigate formal and conceptual components of images, as well as issues of image-reception and agency. The interplay between the historical and the contemporary, between self-presentation and imposed representation as well as in ads / advertising --all are fundamental to our discussion of the visual construction of Black people within a global landscape. 

This program is made possible with support from Getty through its "Visions of Black Life: Honoring the Johnson Publishing Company" initiative. 

About the Artist: Hank Willis Thomas

Born in 1976 in Plainfield, New Jersey and raised in New York, Hank Willis Thomas earned a BFA from New York University, New York, NY (1998) and an MA/MFA from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA (2004). Additionally, he has received honorary doctorates from the Maryland Institute of Art, Baltimore, MD and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts, Portland, ME in 2017.

Thomas’ work has been exhibited internationally and is collected by the Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the High Museum of Art in Atlanta; and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., among others. Thomas is a recipient of the U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts from the Office of Art in Embassies, Washington, DC (2023); the Meridian Center for Cultural Diplomacy Culturefix Award, Washington DC (2023); Tisch School of the Arts Gala Honoree, New York, NY (2023); Silver Art Projects Inaugural Honoree, New York, NY (2023); Healing Our Divided Society Leadership Award from the Eisenhower Foundation at the United Nations, New York, NY (2023); The National Arts Award, Marina Kellen French Outstanding Contributions to the Arts Award (For Freedoms) from Americans for the Arts, New York, NY (2023); the Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship (2019), The Guggenheim Fellowship (2018), AIMIA | AGO Photography Prize (2017), Soros Equality Fellowship (2017), Aperture West Book Prize (2008), Renew Media Arts Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation (2007), and the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Award (2006). He is a former member of the Public Design Commission for the City of New York.

Thomas’ public art practice includes permanent artworks around the country, including The Embrace (2023) on the Boston Common in Boston, MA, a statue that pays homage to the King family, Dr. Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King; REACH (2023), made in collaboration with Coby Kennedy, at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, IL; and Duality (2023) at The Underline in Miami, FL. Additional public works include Unity, a monumental public artwork in Downtown Brooklyn, N.Y.; Love Over Rules, a neon installation in San Francisco, CA; and the sculpture All Power to All People in Opa Locka, FL. His collaborative projects include Question Bridge: Black Males, In Search Of The Truth (The Truth Booth), The Writing on the Wall, and The Gun Violence Memorial Project.

Influenced by social history and the hard-fought, perennial battle for equality in all areas of his work, Thomas co-founded For Freedoms with artist Eric Gottesman, Wyatt Gallery and Michelle Woo. For Freedoms is an artist-led organization that models and increases creative civic engagement, discourse and direct action. Inspired by American artist Norman Rockwell’s paintings of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms (1941) — freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear — For Freedoms uses art to encourage and deepen public explorations of freedom in the 21st century.

Thomas lives and works in New York.

Photo credit: Jai Lennard