News

Seen in the Galleries: “Justice” and “We The People”

Written by:

November 4th, 2025

Hank Willis Thomas, Justice (Red), 2021. Mixed media, including U.S. Flags, 39.5 x 71.5 x 2.5 inches. Hank Willis Thomas, We The People, 2025. Mixed media, including decommissioned prison uniforms, 76.5 x 92.5 x 2.5 inches. Currently on view in the Van Every Gallery are two compelling works by artist Hank Willis Thomas: Justice (Red), 2021 and We The People, 2025. The exhibition coincides with the recent installation of Thomas’s outdoor sculpture With These Hands in front of Cunningham Theatre, creating a powerful campus-wide dialogue. Across these works, Thomas highlights the unfinished struggle for racial equality in the United States,...
Read More

A Playlist Of the People, By the People, For the People — A Companion to We the People

Written by:

October 30th, 2025

Vibrant quilt-like artwork with stars, stripes, and fragments of the American flag in bold colors and patterns.
Hank Willis Thomas’s new exhibit, “We the People,” comes at a very appropriate time for Davidson College and our nation. Thomas’s sculpture, With These Hands: A Memorial to the Enslaved and Exploited, has finally opened after years in the making, marking a long-overdue recognition to those who were directly affected by the college’s historic connection to slavery. At the same time, our nation has reached a peak of political polarization. Thomas’s work invites discussion and deliberation amidst such a contentious time by reaching through the annals of history and pop culture to reckon with the social ills of then and...
Read More

Seen in the Van Every Gallery: Loving Day

Written by:

October 26th, 2025

A sculpture of two arms on a white pedestal. The middle of the bicep of each arm extends upward from the pedestal. One arm is finished with black patina, while the other is finished with polished bronze, appearing gold. At the top of the sculpture, the hands are clasped together.
Hank Willis Thomas's solo exhibition We the People is currently on view in the Van Every and Smith Galleries, and this reflection explores one of several sculptures he created which highlights gesture. Like other smaller works in the exhibition, Loving Day, which Thomas created in 2022, is related to a larger work by the artist which shares the same title. In the large-scale version, each arm is carved in a different color marble. Here, however, Thomas differentiates the two arms with different finishes: one is black patina, while the other is polished bronze.  The gesture Thomas captures in this work symbolizes...
Read More

Seen on Campus: Brass Section (Jamming at Minton’s)

Written by:

October 12th, 2025

Romare Bearden (American, 1911-1988)Brass Section (Jamming at Minton's), from the "Jazz" series, 1979Lithograph in colors on paper24.75 x 32.5 in.Gift of Carol Quillen, 18th President of Davidson College, and George McLendon It is difficult to capture the essence of sound through visual media. Already is it difficult to translate music into a visual language. It becomes even more complicated when that music is jazz. Jazz is as expansive as any other music genre, consisting of a myriad of subgenres and styles, making it impossible to pigeonhole. That’s why jazz is just as often associated with easy-listening, elevator music, as it...
Read More

Seen on Campus: Student Curators Take ART300 Learning Beyond the Classroom

Written by:
October 9th, 2025
Since the spring, the Belk Visual Arts Center has displayed the product of months of learning, critical thinking, and collaboration. On view in the rear of the Missy Boaz Woodward '78 Atrium, Shades of Separation: Women in the Grey Area represents the combined efforts of fifteen students, mostly current senior art history majors.  ART300, or Critical Theory for Visual Study, is a methods course through which rising art historians investigate critical frameworks for artwork analysis. Under the guidance of Art Department Chair John Corso-Esquivel, the students illustrated their learning through this class-wide curatorial project. In March, the students developed several...
Read More

© 2025 Davidson College Art Galleries