page_title: Alma Thomas
section_title: Later reception
hierarchical_section_title: Alma Thomas / Later reception
caption_attribution_description: English: Elysian Fields Alma Thomas 1973 30 1/8 x 42 1/4 in. (76.5 x 107.2 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum acrylic on canvas Abstract Painting
context_page_description: Alma Woodsey Thomas was an African-American Expressionist painter and art educator best known for her colorful abstract paintings. She lived and worked primarily in Washington, D.C., and The Washington Post described her as a force in the Washington Color School. The Wall Street Journal described her in 2016 as a previously "underappreciated artist" who is more recently recognized for her "exuberant" works, noteworthy for their pattern, rhythm and color. Thomas remains an influence to young and old as she was a cornerstone for the Fine Arts at Howard University, started a successful art career later in her life, and took major strides during times of segregation as an African-American female artist. Thomas believed that creativity should be independent of gender or race, creating works with a focus on accidental beauty and the abstraction of color.
context_section_description: Although Thomas did not receive a monograph until 1998 when the Fort Wayne Museum decided to exhibit a retrospective on the artist, her lack of national attention does not accurately represent her legacy and influence on the realm of Visual Arts. Jacob Kainen, her teacher at Howard University throughout the 1950s, asserts that "Thomas played a key role in the development of abstract painting throughout the mid 20th century". In the Fort Wayne Museum's retrospective on Thomas as an artist,  Kainen remembers her as "... a small, slim woman whose elegance of dress and manner and unmistakable firmness of character made the matter of her size irrelevant." Kainen met Alma in 1943, when she was the vice-president of Howard University's art department, at an event at the Barnett Arden Gallery in Washington, D.C. Thomas was accompanied by prominent members of the D.C. art community, James V. Herring and Alonzo J. Aden. Kainen was quoted in the introduction of catalogue of Thomas retrospective in 1966 comparing her to "the Signac of current color painters". 
  In 2009, two paintings, including Watusi (Hard Edge),  by Alma Thomas were chosen by First Lady Michelle Obama, White House interior designer Michael S. Smith (interior designer) and White House curator William Allman, to be exhibited during the Obama presidency. Watusi (Hard Edge) was eventually removed from the White House due to concerns with the piece fitting into the space in Michelle Obama's East Wing office. Sky Light, on loan from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, hung in the Obama family private quarters. In 2015, the Obamas hung Thomas's work Resurrection in the Old Family Dining Room. The painting is the first work by an African-American woman to hang in the public spaces of the White House as part of the permanent collection. The choice of Thomas for the White House collection was described as an ideal symbol for the Obama administration by The New York Times art critic Holland Cotter. Cotter described Thomas' work as "forward-looking without being radical; post-racial but also race-conscious."
  In 2015, another of her paintings, Resurrection (1966), was prominently hung in the Old Family Dining Room of the White House, having been acquired for the 
  White House collection in 2014 with $290,000 in funding from the White House Historical Association.  It was "the first artwork by an African-American woman to hang in the public spaces of the White House and enter the permanent collection."
  Thomas' papers were donated in several periods between 1979 and 2004 to the Archives of American Art by J. Maurice Thomas, Alma Thomas' sister.
  In 2016, Alma Thomas was organized by The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College and The Studio Museum in Harlem. This exhibition was curated by Ian Berry, Dayton Director of the Tang Museum and Lauren Haynes, Associate Curator, Permanent Collection at the Studio Museum in Harlem and supported by the Friends of the Tang. Thomas's patterned compositions, energetic brushwork and commitment to color created a singular and innovative body of work. This exhibition is the first comprehensive look at the artist's work in nearly twenty years and includes rarely exhibited watercolors and early experiments. This exhibition can be divided into four sections: Move to abstraction; Earth, Space, and Late Work, presenting a wide range of evolution of Thomas's work from the late 1950s to her death in 1978.
  In 2019, Thomas's painting, A Fantastic Sunset (1970), was auctioned at a Christie's sale.
caption: Alma Thomas, Elysian Fields, 1973, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of the artist