This exhibition offers a rich reconsideration of a visionary African American painter. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Bob Thompson (1937–1966) earned critical acclaim in the late 1950s for his paintings of figurative complexity and chromatic intensity. Bob Thompson: This House Is Mine borrows its name from a diminutive but exquisite painting. With this title, Thompson declared his ambition to synthesize a new visual language out of elements of historic European painting.

The first museum exhibition devoted to the artist in more than twenty years, This House Is Mine traces Thompson’s brief but prolific transatlantic career, examining his formal inventiveness and his engagement with universal themes of collectivity, bearing witness, struggle, and justice. Bringing together paintings and works on paper from almost fifty public and private collections across the United States, This House Is Mine centers Bob Thompson’s work within expansive art historical narratives and ongoing dialogues about the politics of representation, charting his enduring influence.

The exhibition is accompanied by a lavishly illustrated catalogue featuring scholars, artists, and poets, published in association with Yale University Press. 

On view through January 9, 2022.

Featured Image: Bob Thompson, The Judgement, 1963. Oil on canvas. 60 x 84 in. (152.4 x 213.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, New York. A. Augustus Healy Fund. © Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York

Visit the Exhibition