Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976, Plainfield, New Jersey) is a conceptual artist who focuses on themes of perspective, identity, commodity, media, and popular culture. His practice is often collaborative and engaged in public art. Thomas’s The Embrace, 2022 is a 19-ton monument to Civil Rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King on Boston Common. He co-founded the artist collective For Freedoms with artists Eric Gottesman, Michelle Woo and Wyatt Gallery in 2016 as a platform for creative civic engagement in the U.S. Through Thomas, For Freedoms donated a set of four impactful photographs to Art in Embassies’ Democracy Collection traveling exhibition and collection, on display at the Acropolis Museum, Athens Greece; Xippas Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland; Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP), Lisbon, Portugal; and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C. Referencing American artist Norman Rockwell’s paintings of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms (1941) These newly realized 2018 photographs—Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear—were created by Thomas, Emily Shur, Gottesman, and Wyatt Gallery to highlight a much more inclusive America than what was originally styled in Rockwell’s iconic scenes. His artwork has been featured in numerous Art in Embassies exhibitions, and has participated in artist panel discussions in Lisbon, Portugal, and in Pretoria, Johannesburg, and Cape Town, South Africa.
