The Barnes recently announced plans to present the first major international tour focused on the work of pioneering artist Mickalene Thomas. Titled ‘Mickalene Thomas: All About Love‘, this particular exhibition will be on site at the Foundation this fall (in October) and will cover Thomas’ work, with influences ranging from 19th-century paintings to popular culture.
“In her work, Mickalene Thomas often recasts scenes from 19th-century French paintings, like those well represented in the Barnes collection, in striking tableaux that champion Black figuration, sensuality, and power,” says Thom Collins, Neubauer Family Executive Director and President in a statement.
“We are delighted to present ‘Mickalene Thomas: All About Love’, part of a major international touring project, and Thomas’s first solo exhibition in Philadelphia. We are honored to share her extraordinary and influential work with our community and beyond.”
The East Coast debut of these 50 works by Thomas will span paintings, collages, photography, videos, and site-specific installations. Locals will find rhinestoned, large-scale painted tableauxs alongside bold, intimate compositions throughout the exhibit. And as a release notes, whether in imaginative dialogue with canonical works from the history of art, or playfully reckoning with popular culture and erotica, Thomas’s portraitures offer an empowered vision of beauty and desire, formulated through a sensual, Black feminist lens.
“’All About Love’ at the Barnes is an embodied visual love letter that moves through different temperatures, honoring the intimate and transformative qualities of Mickalene Thomas’s expansive practice,” says curator Renée Mussai in a statement.
“Her artistic universe is forged from deep within the richly textured Black feminist ero-poetics of desire, where visual pleasures reside abundantly, and the powers of love of dedicated being, seeing, and looking are harnessed, amplified, beautified: exquisitely rendered, deliciously gendered.”
The exhibit will feature a few different highlights, including the celebrated ‘Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe: Les trois femmes noires,’ excerpts from an expansive body of collage works made between 2021 and 2023, early painted works from the ‘Brawlin’ Spitfire’ wrestling series and more.
And as a release notes, concurrent with the exhibition, the Barnes will also present four monumental photo collage panels by Thomas, titled ‘Noir est beau (Joséphine Baker 3)’, on the east end of the Annenberg Court. The four panels that will be on view during ‘All About Love’ are among 13 photo collages that were created for the 2023 Dior runway’s scenography, all featuring women who inspire Thomas and who, she states, “with the odds set against them, persevered with confidence, elegance, beauty, and talent.”
To find out more information on ‘All About Love’ at The Barnes Foundation (2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway), visit barnesfoundation.org
