Back in November, we closed the national tour of the PAM-organized exhibition, Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal… The works in the exhibition stick with me and I continue to be moved by Thomas’s art that tells us so much about the history and the present in our country. Throughout the last year, I’ve repeatedly gone back to the message “Keep the Faith, Baby”—a phrase that the artist remembers first seeing on a pin his mother had. “Keep the faith, baby; spread it gently and walk together, children” was the rallying call from Civil-Rights activist and Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. The full statement emphasizes the active and reminds us that we must join together to continue the necessary push for justice. We need faith, and hope, and action.
—Sara Krajewski, The Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art
Hank Willis Thomas (American, born 1976). Keep the Faith, Baby, 2019. Letterpress on coventry rag paper. Benefiting Portland Art Museum on the occasion of All Things Being Equal…
