In Conversation: Packaged Black & The Geography of Innocence

Join artists Barbara Earl Thomas and Derrick Adams live on Instagram as they discuss their artworks on view at both Henry Art Gallery and Seattle Art Museum and the impact that their multi-year, intergenerational, and cross-country exchange has had on their individual work and their communities. These bold contemporary artists will be joined by Catharina Manchanda, SAM's Jon and Mary Shirley Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art and Shamim M. Momin, Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Henry. Over the last year, New York-based Derrick Adams has shown work as part of Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle (March 5–May 23, 2021) at Seattle Art Museum and in Packaged Black: Derrick Adams and Barbara Earl Thomas at the Henry through May 1, 2022. Packaged Black places the artworks of these two artists in conversation through installation, while The American Struggle put Thomas and Adams in conversation through programming surrounding Jacob Lawrence, an artist that has influenced both of them greatly. Next year, a painting by Adams will also be featured in Our Blue Planet: Global Visions of Water at Seattle Art Museum opening March 18.

Barbara Earl Thomas is a Seattle-based artist whose solo show, Barbara Earl Thomas: The Geography of Innocence, is on view at SAM through January 2, 2022. Her prolific art practice is evident in the creation of a new body of work for her exhibition at SAM, followed shortly by all new work for Packaged Black at the Henry. Both of these exhibitions display the importance of community to Thomas as an artist through the subjects of her portraits as well as the depth of her artistic inquiries in collaboration with Derrick Adams in the installation at the Henry.

Packaged Black: Derrick Adams and Barbara Earl Thomas at the Henry is a collaborative, multi-media installation developed from these artist's shared dialogue about representation, Black identity, and practices of cultural resistance.

Barbara Earl Thomas: The Geography of Innocence centers Black youth in a series of all-new artworks at once delicate and resilient. The disarming expressions of children in Thomas’ portraits ask us to consider how we see each other and how we internalize and project innocence and guilt.