Pace Live

In Conversation

Hank Willis Thomas and Dr. Madeleine Haddon

Wednesday, Nov 20
6 – 7 PM GMT
5 Hanover Square
London

EVENT DETAILS

Hank Willis Thomas and Dr. Madeleine Haddon in Conversation
Wednesday, Nov 20
6 – 7 PM GMT
5 Hanover Square
London

HOW TO ATTEND

(opens in a new window) RSVP

CONNECT

(opens in a new window) @hankwillisthomas
(opens in a new window) @pacegallery

Join us for a conversation between Hank Willis Thomas and Madeleine Haddon, Curator of V&A East, in celebration of the exhibition Hank Willis Thomas: Kinship of the Soul in London.

On view from November 20 to December 21, Hank Willis Thomas’s newest exhibition, Kinship of the Soul, will showcase a new body of retroreflective collages and sculptures that continue Thomas’s exploration of the histories of abstraction through the lenses of colonization, globalization, and appropriation, with reference to Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, and Henri Matisse. These works, which reveal latent images depending on their lighting and the viewer’s perspective, underscore Thomas’s interest in using wayfinding materials to illuminate often overlooked histories and narratives.

Madeleine Haddon

Madeleine Haddon is Curator of V&A East, the newest campus of the Victoria & Albert Museum, opening in 2025. Prior to joining the V&A, Dr. Haddon was an independent curator working between London and New York. She recently curated (opens in a new window) Nuestra Casa: Rediscovering the Treasures of the Hispanic Society Museum & Library at the Hispanic Society in New York and worked on (opens in a new window) Matisse: The Red Studio at The Museum of Modern Art.

Dr. Haddon serves on the board of the Public Arts Trust of India and advisory committees for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harvard Art Museums, and Athena Art Foundation. She is a founding member of the Steering Committee for The National Gallery’s Young Ambassadors. Dr. Haddon has recently contributed essays to the exhibition catalogues  (opens in a new window) Murillo: From Heaven to Earth (2022) at the Kimbell Art Museum and  (opens in a new window) Travel, Respond, Assemble: Isabella Stewart Gardner and Betye Saar (2023) at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Previously, Dr. Haddon was a Teaching Fellow at the University of Edinburgh.

Hank Willis Thomas

Working across various modes of art-making such as sculpture, screen-printing, neon, mixed media, and installation art, Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976, Plainfield, New Jersey) is a conceptual artist widely known for his investigation of themes relating to mass media, identity, popular culture, and perspective. Thomas often mines the history of art to draw connections between visual culture and the societal structures from which it arises. In his work, he encourages the viewer to question consumer representation and its perpetuation of racial stereotypes. Looking to the ways that commercial imagery informs perceptions of the self and global others, Thomas likens his practice to that of a “visual cultural archaeologist”.

In the UK, and concurrent with Kinship of the Soul, works by Thomas are featured in Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, through January 5, 2025. Additionally, Thomas’s monumental bronze sculpture, All Power to All People (Bronze) (2023), is on view at Yorkshire Sculpture Park through August 2025. On November 14, Pace will open Kinship: Irving Penn, Curated by Hank Willis Thomas.