Mickalene Thomas received a BFA from the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, in 2000 and an MFA from Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT, in 2002. Her first major solo presentation took place at the Brooklyn Museum and Santa Monical Museum of Art in 2012. Since then, she has had a number of institutional solo presentations including at The Dayton Art Institute, OH (2018); Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA (2018); Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, CA (2018); Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA (2017); Newcomb Art Museum, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA (2017); Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA (2017); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2016); Aspen Art Museum, CO (2016); Aperture Foundation, New York (2016); George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY (2014). She has a major forthcoming traveling retrospective, Mickalene Thomas: All About Love, beginning at The Broad, Los Angeles (May – September 2024), The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia (October 2024 – January 2025), The Hayward Gallery, London (February – May 2025), and Les Abattoirs, Toulouse, France (September 2025 – January 2026).

Thomas’ work is in numerous international collections, including Art Institute of Chicago; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Detroit Institute of Arts; Hammer Museum, UCLA; Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Saint Louis Art Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Seattle Art Museum; Smithsonian American Art Museum; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Yale University Art Collection, New Haven, CT. Thomas has been awarded multiple prizes and grants, including the USA Francie Bishop Good & David Horvitz Fellow (2015); Anonymous Was A Woman Award (2013); Brooklyn Museum Asher B. Durand Award (2012); and the Timehri Award for Leadership in the Arts (2010).