Current Exhibitions 2024
Ernest and Ruth
Ernest and Ruth is a sculpture in the shape of a classic comic-book speech bubble, as if pulled off the page and into three dimensions. Named after artist Hank Willis Thomas’s grandmother, Ruth Willis, and Ruth’s father, Ernest Holman, the sculpture’s title immediately suggests a dialogue—two people sharing one bubble.
The sculpture is a bench: an invitation to sit and converse with one another, to share and to listen. Visitors become a part of the artwork, activating and interpreting it for themselves, and giving the work meaning that constantly evolves with new ideas. Standing away from the work, it frames the surrounding landscape, creating shifting perspectives—adding to the infinite stories the work supports. Thomas hopes that when visitors occupy the piece, they will “contemplate what it means to inhabit their own speech and beliefs.”
On view on the Tang Museum lawn from September 2024 until January 2026, Ernest and Ruth is presented in conjunction with the fall 2024 exhibition Establish, Insure, Provide, Promote: Election 2024, which explores questions of democracy and citizenship, providing a gathering space for talks, panels, concerts, voter registration, debates, town meetings, class sessions, club events, and more.
Hank Willis Thomas is a conceptual artist based in Brooklyn, New York, working in sculpture, photography, printing, public art, and more. He often uses symbols and icons from American pop culture to address the implications of marketing on the social dynamics of race, gender, and ethnic identity. Drawing from the history of the civil rights movement and his own experiences as a Black American, Thomas invites viewers to contemplate the nature of storytelling: how do historical and current biases influence our relationships with America’s past, and whose narratives are included or erased?
Thomas’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally at such institutions as Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Hong Kong Art Centre, International Center of Photography in New York City, Brooklyn Museum, and California African American Museum in Los Angeles. His work is in numerous collections, including San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. He received his BFA in Photography and Africana Studies from New York University and his MFA/MA in Photography and Visual Criticism from California College of the Arts. He has received honorary doctorates from Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts in Portland, Maine.