NEWS
Holiday Hours at the Davidson College Art Galleries
Hank Willis Thomas: We The People
On View: Through Feb. 1, 2026*
Location: Van Every/Smith Galleries, Belk Visual Arts Center, Davidson College, Davidson, NC
*Hours around holidays/gallery closures will be posted online.
About the Exhibition
The Van Every/Smith Galleries at Davidson College presents We The People, a solo exhibition by Hank Willis Thomas that explores the role of art in reimagining history, memory, and repair. The exhibition opens amid ongoing efforts by cultural institutions to examine their histories and coincides with the dedication of a new, permanent memorial by Thomas in collaboration with Perkins&Will on the Davidson College campus—With These Hands: A Memorial to the Enslaved and Exploited, which reflects the college's work to add to its history. The memorial acknowledges the labor of those who helped build and sustain the college, who were left unrecognized, and brings these members of the Davidson community from across the years into the narrative timeline of the college.
Bringing together more than 15 years of work across sculpture, textiles, neon, lenticular and retroreflective installations, We The People examines how collective memory is constructed and who has been excluded from it, while also looking forward toward repair, reconciliation and inclusion. Presented in tandem with the college’s efforts to learn from the past and build upon the institution’s future, the exhibition invites reflection on the ways the artist’s broader practice connects to the themes embodied in the permanent memorial by Thomas.
The exhibition’s title comes from Thomas’s We The People, a new text-based textile that composes fragments of decommissioned prison uniforms into the first three words of the preamble of the Constitution. While these words affirm that the U.S. government derives its authority from the consent of its citizens, Thomas underscores that, at the nation’s founding, many were excluded—among them enslaved people, Indigenous people, and women. By using garments associated with incarceration, the work speaks to the continuation of such exclusions.
Learn more about the exhibition and Hank Willis Thomas here.
Hank Willis Thomas: We The People will be on view in the Van Every/Smith Galleries in the Belk Visual Arts Center at Davidson College through Feb. 1, 2026.
Exhibitions and programs are supported in part by the Herb Jackson and Laura Grosch Gallery Endowment and Davidson College Friends of the Arts.