ABOUT HANK WILLIS THOMAS
Born in 1976 in Plainfield, New Jersey, and raised in New York, Hank Willis Thomas is a conceptual artist whose work addresses issues of identity, politics, popular culture, and mass media as they pertain to American race relations. Influenced by social history and the hard-fought, perennial battle for equality in all areas of his work, Thomas co-founded
For Freedoms, an artist-led organization that models and increases creative civic engagement, discourse, and direct action. Thomas’s 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. Read full bio
here.
ABOUT SHAMIM M. MOMIN
Shamim M. Momin is the Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Henry Art Gallery. In this role since 2018, she has overseen the Curatorial Department, and organized numerous exhibitions, including the museum-wide group exhibition
In Plain Sight, as well as major commissions by Gary Simmons, Kelly Akashi, Donna Huanca, Diana Al-Hadid, and others. Prior to joining the Henry, she was director, curator, and co-founder of LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division), a nonprofit public art organization committed to curating site- and situation-specific contemporary art projects. Previously, Momin served for more than ten years at the Whitney Museum of American Art, co-curating the 2004 and 2008
Whitney Biennials and overseeing the
Contemporary Projects series. Momin was Adjunct Professor of Contemporary Art for Williams College for the 2007 and 2008 Semester in New York program, and is currently Affiliate Professor of Art at the School of Art, Art History and Design, University of Washington.
