Opening reception Saturday, June 13, 2009, 6-8pm

Roberts & Tilton is pleased to announce the exhibition Black Is Beautiful by Hank Willis Thomas. Known for his appropriation and modification of mass-media imagery, Thomas wallpapers the Project Room with over 3,000photographs of African American pin-up models from 1950 to the present. The sequence of weekly portraits spans the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power movement, Women's Liberation, racial integration and post-colonial thought, up to the inauguration of First Lady Michelle Obama. The installation marks a fascinating shift in the image of the ideal African American woman, especially when traced through the politics of representation, and speaks to the media’s influence on public opinion. Thomas' mother, historian, Deborah Willis, Ph.D. writes in her forthcoming book, Posing Beauty, that "A re-reading of beauty through historical, art and advertising photographs reveals how racialized beauty was posed and reconsidered as a political act." Beauty is political, and over the past century numerous black-owned publications took it upon themselves to posit the essence of "black beauty" at a given moment. By surveying their recent history, Thomas is questioning how the politics of beauty in the present moment will be viewed in hindsight by future generations. Hank Willis Thomas is currently included in the Rubell Family Collection’s exhibition 30 Americans, Miami, Florida (through May 30, 2009). His work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C., the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York,, and at the International Center of Photography, New York, New York. Thomas’ first monograph, Pitch Blackness, was published by Aperture in 2008.

Hank Willis Thomas’ Black is Beautiful exhibition is organized in collaboration with Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, New York.