Philadelphia Celebrates Black Art: Three Must-See Exhibitions This Winter

Mickalene Thomas: All About Love at the Barnes Foundation

Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe: Les trois femmes noires by Mickalene Thomas   — Photo courtesy Barnes Foundation

Through Sunday, January 12, 2025

It’s only right to call it a homecoming.

After collaborating with singer Solange, capturing First Lady Michelle Obama and garnering international acclaim, Camden-born artist Mickalene Thomas returns to the Philadelphia area for her first solo exhibition in the region and her first major international tour.

This fall, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway’s Barnes Foundation presents the East Coast debut of Mickalene Thomas: All About Love. The exhibit — which takes its name from bell hooks’ classic book — spotlights Black femininity, agency, desire and an empowered vision of beauty. 

The collection features a series of 50 shimmering works (spanning the early 2000s to today) utilizing mixed media — including paintings, collages, photography, videos and installations — and highlighted by stunning large-scale rhinestone-bejeweled painted tableaus.

The models — women from Thomas’ life, including her late mother, Sandra Bush — exude confidence, sensuality and joy in scenes reminiscent of 1970s French erotica, Jet magazine spreads and 19th-century masterpieces by artists familiar to Barnes’ guests.

For more info on Mickalene Thomas: All About Love at the Barnes Foundation, including hours and ticket information, click the button below.

The Time Is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure at the Philadelphia Art Museum

Kind of Blue by Claudette-Johnson   — Photo courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art

Through Sunday, February 9, 2025

Traveling across the Atlantic from London’s National Portrait Gallery, The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure makes its North American debut at the Philadelphia Art Museum.

Curated by trailblazing journalist and curator Ekow Eshun, the exhibit takes inspiration from African American thinkers like W.E.B. DuBois and James Baldwin (from whose 1963 essay the exhibition gets its name) and contemporary Black life.

With over 60 works — paintings, sculptures, ceramics and more — by 28 artists from across the Black and African diaspora, the collection celebrates Black culture in all its complexity, richness and beauty while asking questions about race, identity and history.

Alongside Toyin Ojih Odutola’s paintings imagining life in his native Nigeria if it were untouched by the trans-Atlantic slave trade and British artist Barbara Walker’s historic portraits reenvisioned with their Black subjects in the foreground, you’ll find works by six local artists including Roberto Lugo, Danielle Mckinney and ​​Deborah Roberts.

For more info on The Time Is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure at the Philadelphia Art Museum, including hours and ticket information, click the button below.

Shared Vision: Portraits from The CCH Pounder-Koné Collection at the African American Museum in Philadelphia

  — Photo courtesy African American Museum in Philadelphia

Through Sunday, March 2, 2025

Curated in collaboration with award-winning actress CCH Pounder (NCIS: New Orleans, Avatar, The Shield) over the course of two years, this new exhibition at the African American Museum in Philadelphia highlights contemporary art spanning the African diaspora.

The exhibition — composed of 40 works of art in multiple media from the actress’ personal collection of 500 — features Black figures and explores identity, presence, beauty, autonomy and power.

Featured works include portraits, surrealist paintings, mixed-media works and more by world-renowned artists like Bisa Butler, Elizabeth Colomba, Samella Lewis and Lezley Saar, along with art from emerging artists like Luke Agada and Alex Peter Idoko.

And the collection takes a global approach, with artists hailing from the Caribbean to Nigeria to Harlem.

For more info on Shared Vision: Portraits from The CCH Pounder-Koné Collection at the African American Museum in Philadelphia, including hours and ticket information, click the button below.