For over four decades, Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson have championed the work of Black artists. They have supported exhibitions and scholarship as they built a remarkable collection that spans 100 years of Black creativity in America.

This exhibition celebrates the recent and promised gifts of 175 works from the Thompsons to the National Gallery—the largest group of objects by Black artists to enter our collection at one time. Explore more than 60 paintings, sculpture, drawings, and prints organized in sections around themes of music and abstraction, figuration and portraiture, civil rights and social politics, as well as landscape and transcultural connections and influences.

Works range from a captivating portrait by Beauford Delaney and lyrical abstractions by Mildred Thompson to a towering allegorical woodcut by Alison Saar and an intricate sculpture of found objects by vanessa german. Enjoy works by renowned artists—Jacob Lawrence, Archibald Motley, and Kara Walker—and discover artists you may not yet know, such as Camille Billops, Vivian Browne, Moe Brooker, and Alonzo Davis.

Curators 

Curated by Kanitra Fletcher, associate curator of African American and Afro-Diasporic art, and Shelley Langdale, curator and head of the department of modern prints and drawings, with Claudia Watts, research assistant, and Emily Wehby, curatorial assistant, all of the National Gallery of Art.

Dates: June 7 - October 5, 2025

Locations: East Building, Mezzanine - Gallery 214.