New York’s Jack Shainman Gallery will represent the artist Mickalene Thomas, widely known for her boldly colorful, rhinestone-adorned portraits that lionize Black women. She will have a solo show at the gallery in January 2028.
The artist will maintain longstanding relationships with three of her existing galleries: Yancey Richardson in New York; Galerie Nathalie Obadia in Paris; and Baldwin Gallery in Aspen, Colorado. (Thomas has in the past also been represented by New York–based Lehmann Maupin, Kavi Gupta and Rhona Hoffman both in Chicago, and Los Angeles’s Susanne Vielmetter, as well as working on a project basis with New York-based Lévy Gorvy Dayan.)
For her work, dealing with concepts of race, queerness, femininity, and beauty, Thomas equally draws inspiration from art history, popular culture, and African textiles, among other sources. Since earning a Yale MFA in 2002, she has worked in many mediums, including painting, photography, collage, video, and installation.
“I’ve known Jack since the beginning of my career,” the artist told ARTnews in a recent interview. “Life is really funny. He came by my studio early in my career, at the same time that Lehmann Maupin came by, and we had a really great meeting. I don’t know why I didn’t say yes, but the connection we made during that time was so deep and special that we became friends. He’s been not only a great champion and advocate, I was treated as though I was one of his artists.”
Thomas’s work appears in major institutional collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Whitney Museum, all in New York, as well as the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, among others. Her first major internationally touring exhibition, “Mickalene Thomas: All About Love” opened at LA’s Broad in 2024, co-organized with the Hayward Gallery, London, and in partnership with the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia.
Thomas was named one of Time Magazine’s Most Influential People in 2025, the same year in which she was the subject of a solo show at the Grand Palais in Paris. She has also collaborated with luxury brands, with Dior tapping her to create the stage design that served as the backdrop for the house’s haute couture show in Paris in January 2023.
Mickalene Thomas.
© Lila Barth
Shainman founded his gallery with Claude Simard (1956–2014) in 1984 in Washington, D.C., soon moving to New York, where he has maintained a presence in the Chelsea neighborhood since 1997. In 2013, the gallery opened The School, a 30,000-square-foot former school building in Kinderhook, New York, and in 2025 he opened in a grand and roomy former bank facility in Tribeca.
“His gallery spaces are the best in the Northeast,” said Thomas. “Jack has a great eye. He’s an innovator. He takes risks. He got the School, and now you have other galleries getting similar spaces. He thinks about how artists exhibit their work and how the space can challenge the artists to make groundbreaking works. It pushes us when you have a space that’s architecturally demanding—you want to scale up and play with the architecture. That’s what excited me, too, it being Jack and it being the space.”
Just last year, the gallery announced the representation of Faith Ringgold, and in recent years expanded its roster with artists including Ifeyinwa Joy Chiamonwu and Tyler Mitchell, as well as the estate of Emanoel Araújo. Shainman regularly exhibits in top art fairs, including Frieze and Art Basel in their various locations and, in New York, the Armory Show.
Shainman’s stable lists some 40 artists, including heavy hitters like El Anatsui, Nick Cave, Barkley L. Hendricks, Kerry James Marshall, Hank Willis Thomas, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Many of them had their first New York showing with the dealer. Five of his artists have represented their countries in the Venice Biennale, with two (Malick Sidibe and El Anatsui) winning Golden Lions. Artists he represents have won grants from the MacArthur Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, as well as Fulbright scholarships and other great honors.
Thomas expressed great admiration for the roster. “I’m with Nick Cave, someone I’ve looked up to for many years, a mentor! He’s one of the people I called up to ask for advice about joining the gallery. He said, ‘Come on, sister!’”
“We have known each other for decades, and I’ve always respected her and admired her work,” Shainman told ARTnews. “She is so extraordinary and singular. It took us a while to get there, but it’s a really exciting thing. She brings a lot to the table. She fits the gallery’s roster but brings her own perspective.”
Shainman went on, “She’s never limited herself to being just a painter. Mickalene is such a renaissance woman. She’s mostly focused on paintings but photos, videos, and even carpets—the woman is incredible and very ambitious.”
The dealer described her market as “strong and consistent.” Thomas’s auction high, set at Christie’s New York in 2021 with Racquel Reclining Wearing Purple Jumpsuit (2016), is $1.8 million; it had a pre-sale high estimate of just $600,000. Some 13 works of hers have sold for north of a half-million dollars, all since 2019, according to data from analytics company ARTDAI. One mixed-medium work, Untitled #10 (2014), fetched $889,100 against a $90,000 high estimate at Phillips New York in 2021.
