For a pop of color in the winter season, see Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas from the Smithsonian Museum of American Art at the Denver Museum of Art through January 12 and at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York February 8 through May 25, 2025.
Denver has welcomed this mid-century modern painter with open arms, with visitors lounging in several living-room settings surrounded by abstractions from the Sixties and Seventies by a Washington, D.C. painter who born in the late 19th century but who lived to see a man land on the Moon.
Alma Thomas grew up in Georgia, and earned the first fine arts degree ever granted by Howard University in 1924. After receiving a masters in education from Columbia, Alma spent the next 30 years teaching in Washington, D.C. public schools.
But she stayed close with her professors at Howard, who founded the Barnett Aden Gallery, one of first racially integrated and Black-owned art galleries in the United States. Alma served as the gallery’s VP, which displayed a who’s who of contemporary African-American artists, like Elizabeth Catlett, Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, and Henry O. Tanner.
By the early 1950s, Alma’s work was regularly shown in exhibitions at the gallery. When Alma finally retired from teaching in 1960 at age 69, she was finally able to paint full time. The Smithsonian’s exhibition features Alma’s work from this highly productive period.
Take a look at our favorites in our Flickr album.
The exhibition is centered around three subjects that inspired her – nature, the cosmos, and music. Her vivid color paintings welcome you to the exhibition but around the corner you see what really inspired her – a wall-sized photo of Alma’s beloved flower garden.
She loved the changing seasons, the patterns of gardens, and patterns observed by light flickering through the crepe myrtles in her garden or through the trees on her walks through DC’s endless greenways and parks.
The exhibition also features an immersive environment where visitors can use colors and shapes from Alma’s paintings to splash supersized across the gallery walls.
By the 1970s, Alma’s love of music and rhythm were reflected in her abstractions, although the titles of her canvases tell us that she saw expressive melodies in nature too.
Captivated by the promise of technology, Alma also reveled in the mysteries and rhythms of the planets, space, and those frontiers of exploration. She really felt that the Moon, planets, and stars represented the peace and harmony that were sometimes lacking on Earth.
Always searching for beauty in the world, continuing to paint, and contemplating a brighter future, Alma achieved unprecedented art-world recognition in 1972 at age 80 –a one-woman show at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington and in New York at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Not bad for a gal who grew up in “horse and buggy days” in Georgia! Thank you to the Smithsonian for collecting Alma’s work and producing this joyful, colorful show.
Click here to read more in Denver’s exhibition guide and watch this short glimpse of the galleries below:
Listen to curator Rory Padeken discuss Alma Thomas’s life and work with artist Jordan Casteel, choreographer and dancer Cleo Parker Robinson, and floral artist Breigh Jones-Coplin.
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Wow. I love this! sSent from my iPhone
Thanks! She was so inspired by gardening!!!