WattsOS
S
Strike
2018 · Stainless steel
Overall: 32 3/4 × 32 1/4 × 7 1/4 in. (83.2 × 81.9 × 18.4 cm)
Whitney Museum of American Art
WATTS INDEXThe canonical database of visual culture
Hank Willis Thomas
1976
Plainfield, NJ, USA
PhotographyPop ArtConceptual Art
Representation
None documented
1
Institutional Exhibitions
10
Works in Collection
84
Assets Indexed
12
Authority-backed Facts
0
Publications Referenced
90%
Profile Completeness
Cultural Positioning
Movements
- • Pop Art
- • Conceptual Art
Related Artists
No edges recorded
Influence Graph
No influence edges encoded yet.
Selected Institutional Exhibitions
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Hank Willis Thomas
Pace Gallery
2025
About
Why this artist matters now
Hank Willis Thomas creates photographs and conceptual installations that dismantle advertising imagery and consumer culture to expose embedded histories of race, identity, and representation. Working with appropriated brand materials, found photographs, and text, he transforms commercial visual language into a critical apparatus that questions how media shapes collective memory. His practice oscillates between large-scale public interventions and intimate gallery-based works, examining the visual architecture of desire and belonging in American popular culture.
Source: Jack Shainman · Trust score: 100% · Updated 2mo ago
Graph relationships
Taste overlap and adjacency
Movement
Pop Art
Medium
Photography
Related Artists
12 in graph
Institutional
Museum Collections
Canonical record
Artworks (10)
View all 10 artworks →
Record
Images
29 assets
View all 29 media items →
Related artists
Adjacent in the graph
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Shared movement
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Roy DeCarava
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Steven Shearer
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Record
Movements and affiliations
Institutional
Representation & Collections
Gallery
Pace Gallery
In collection
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
In collection
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
In collection
Cleveland Museum of Art
In collection
Whitney Museum of American Art
Market
Auction sale history
Houses that have sold works by this artist at auction
Background
Education
New York University Tisch School of the Arts
Visual Arts
California College of the Arts
Visual Arts
Record