Bob Thompson (1937-1966)

Selected Works

1 of 4

Untitled, 1959
oil on canvas
49 x 35 1/2 inches / 124.5 x 90.2 cm
signed

The Circus, 1963
oil on canvas
36 3/8 x 36 3/8 inches / 92.4 x 92.4 cm
signed

The Struggle, 1963
oil on canvas
58 x 78 inches
signed

Tribute to an American Indian, 1963
oil on canvas
63 1/8 x 86 3/4 inches / 160.3 x 220.3 cm
signed

Exhibitions

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New & Noteworthy

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Prints & Publications

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Artist Information

Biography
Public Collections
Solo Exhibitions
Group Exhibitions
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“My problem is the projection of images (often elusive) that seem to have meaning in terms of feeling…The important thing is to transfer the image to the canvas as it appears to me…My painting has no style—it constantly changes—simply different images. My criterion is the integrity of the projection. I love all things that look the way I feel!”[1]

–Bob Thompson

Bob Thompson was born in 1937, in Louisville, KY, but his family soon relocated to Elizabethtown, KY, where his father opened a dry cleaning business. The move took the family away from the urban bourgeois social network to which the family had belonged in Louisville, and since his father discouraged his children from associating with the lower-income black children in their new community, Thompson and his sisters spent much of their childhood without close friends. Thompson was very close to his father, so his sudden death in a car accident when Thompson was thirteen left an indelible mark on the artist’s psyche and physical health. Not long after the accident, Thompson contracted mumps, which then developed into encephalitis, causing him to slip into a coma for three days. Although he recovered, Thompson was left with chronic, severe headaches for several years afterward. In 1950, Thompson moved back to Louisville to live with his sister Cecile and her husband, Robert Holmes, a cartographer who also cultivated an art practice, and had encouraged Thompson’s interest in drawing since an early age. Thompson’s parents strongly believed in the value of education and expected all of their children to attend college, so while living in Louisville Thompson attended an academically rigorous, all-black high school that included African American history in its curriculum. He graduated in 1955 and enrolled in Boston University, living in Cambridge with his sister Phyllis and her family. Thompson initially intended to study medicine but, in 1956, with low grades and attenuating interest, he left Boston and transferred into the art program at the University of Louisville.

The faculty at Louisville included several German refugees, and their interest in Expressionism had a formative impact on Thompson. In 1958, he spent the summer in Provincetown, Massachusetts where he encountered the work of another German refugee, the Expressionist painter Jan Müller. Although Müller had died months before Thompson got to the Cape, he met the artist’s widow, Dody Müller, who advised Thompson, “Don't ever look for your solutions from contemporaries—look at Old Masters.”[i] Thompson felt so strong an affinity with the late Müller’s work that he created a sizeable oil-on-Masonite work, The Funeral of Jan Müller (1958). That same summer, Thompson also met and befriended a group of artists who were taking a divergent path from that of the New York School painters, including Emilio Cruz and Gandy Brodie. These artists, as Peter Schjeldahl writes, “embraced a peculiar vision of art history…Its matter and manner announced the artists as a community of untrammeled, funky seers who all but breathed paint.”[2] After a brief stopover in Louisville at the end of the summer, Thomas relocated to New York, eventually settling into a cold-water flat in a decaying tenement on the Lower East Side.

Quickly embracing the vibrant bohemian culture of the downtown avant-garde scene, Thompson met and befriended Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones) as well as other leading artists and writers of the Beat generation. An inveterate jazz lover, Thompson was a regular at the Five Spot Café, where legendary talents like Ornette Coleman, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, and Charlie Haden often played. He also participated in a few early Fluxus Happenings organized by Allan Kaprow and Red Grooms, filling out their roster of painter-performers, which also included Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Jim Dine. Inspired by the city’s energy and culture, Thompson quickly arrived at his mature style, taking Dody Müller’s advice to heart by reworking the compositions of European Masters such as Piero della Francesca, Nicolas Poussin, Francisco de Goya and Jacopo Tintoretto into simplified, abstracted forms rendered in palettes alternately hot and violent or cool and dark. By appropriating Old Masters’ compositional structures contemporary and transforming them into contemporary allegorical nightmares, Thompson developed his own symbolic lexicon to express themes and concepts reflective of his own experience. The pantheon of figures that populated his landscapes often featured specific people, monstrous creatures, mythically oversized animals, and silhouetted men in hats—the latter of which are often a symbol of the artist’s own spiritual and physical existence.

Visceral in style yet structurally disciplined, Thompson’s paintings soon impressed critics and collectors, and less than a year after his arrival to the city, the audacious young painter had his first solo exhibition at the Delancey Street Museum, which was followed by a two-person show at the prestigious Zabriskie Gallery. In late 1960 Thompson married Carol Plenda and that winter the couple traveled to Europe on a travel grant from the Walter Gutman Foundation. There Thompson was able to study the masterworks with which his practice was in conversation first-hand, visiting the Louvre almost daily to sketch during their stay in Paris. In 1962, a grant from the Whitney Opportunity Fellowship allowed the couple to relocated to the Spanish island of Ibiza, where the cost of living was exceptionally low and there was a large international community. The Thompsons soon became known for their hospitality, welcoming friends and strangers into their home, feeding them, and hosting all manner of parties and happenings.

Bob and Carol Thompson returned to New York in 1963, renting an apartment on the Lower East Side, not far from the studio of friend and fellow artist Lester Johnson, who helped Thompson get a one-man show at Martha Jackson’s gallery that same year. The show received favorable reviews and propelled the artist’s career to a new level of success. In 1964, he had solo exhibitions at the Richard Gray Gallery in Chicago and at Paula Cooper’s gallery in New York, after which collector Joseph Hirshhorn purchased a number of his paintings. On the recommendation of Lester Johnson, Thompson was included in Yale University’s influential Seven Young Painters exhibition that same year. He had a second solo exhibition with Martha Jackson in 1965, which brought an unprecedented number of viewers to the gallery. The following year, Thompson used the money from the Martha Jackson exhibitions to travel to Rome with the intent to further his study of the Renaissance. Early in 1966 he required emergency gall bladder surgery, after which he was advised to take a long recuperation period. However, Thompson continued at his characteristically frenzied pace and lifestyle, dying of respiratory complications a few months later. In 1967, St. Mark’s Gallery in New York held a memorial exhibition of his work. In a brief life that included only eight years of full-time painting, Thompson created a complex body of work that has proven to be of great significance to successive generations of artists and art historians.

[1] Bob Thompson quoted in “Academic Strait Jacket: Disdainful Thompson,” Gazette of the Arts in Louisville, February 9, 1959, Box 1, Folder 55, News Clippings, 1959–1969, Series 6: Printed Material, 1960 – 2005, Bob Thompson Papers.

[2] Peter Schjeldahl, “Touching Thompson,” Village Voice, October 19, 1998.

Since his death, Thompson has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions. In 1969, a retrospective was held at the New School Art Center in New York, followed by a memorial exhibition at the Speed Art Museum, Louisville in 1971. Subsequent solo exhibitions were held at the University Art Gallery of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (1974); the National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC (1975) and The Studio Museum in Harlem in New York (1978). In 1998, the Whitney Museum of American Art organized a major traveling retrospective exhibition, featuring over one hundred of Thompson’s paintings with an accompanying catalogue by Thelma Golden. In 2012, the Hite Art Institute of the University of Louisville mounted Seeking Bob Thompson: Dialogue/Object.

In July 2021, the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, ME opened the comprehensive career retrospective Bob Thompson: This House Is Mine, organized by Katz Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Diana Tuite. A fully illustrated accompanying catalogue published in association with Yale University Press features an expansive group of contributors including Adrienne L. Childs, Bridget R. Cooks, Lowery Stokes Sims, Rashid Johnson, and Alex Katz. The exhibition garnered widespread critical acclaim as it toured nationally, visiting the Smart Museum of Art at The University of Chicago (February 10–May 15, 2022); the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA (June 17–September 11, 2022); and the Hammer Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles (October 9, 2022–January 8, 2023). In addition to museum retrospectives, Thompson has been celebrated in multidisciplinary capacities, such as in February 2024, when the acclaimed chamber music group Black Moon Trio performed the special concert “Spilling Over: Music Inspired by the Art of Bob Thompson” at the Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago in Chicago, IL.

Thompson’s work has also been regularly exhibited in important group exhibitions worldwide, including Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, organized by the Tate Modern, London, England (2017–2020); Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition, curated by Adrienne L. Childs at The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC (2020); Black Refractions: Highlights from The Studio Museum in Harlem organized by The Studio Museum, New York, NY (2019–2021); and The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse, organized by Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA (2021–22). In 2022, Thompson’s work was included in the exhibitions Elegy: Lament in the 20th Century at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; New York: 1962-1964 at The Jewish Museum, New York, NY; America: Between Dreams and Realities, Selections from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada; and When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting organized by The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, South Africa, which traveled to the Kunstmuseum Basel in Basel, Switzerland. Thompson’s work continues to be included in museum exhibitions, including Black Artists in America: From Civil Rights to the Bicentennial at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, TN (2023); Americans in Paris: Artists Working in Postwar France, 1946–1962 organized by Grey Art Gallery, New York University, New York, NY (2024); and Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists since 1940 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, TX (2024).

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery’s relationship with the work of Bob Thompson dates to 1996, when the gallery took on representation of the estate and mounted Bob Thompson: Heroes, Martyrs & Spectres. Three more solo exhibitions followed: Fantastic Visions (1999), Meteor in a Black Hat (2005)—which traveled to the Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University in Milwaukee—and Naked at the Edge. Following twenty-three years of representation, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery acquired the Estate of Bob Thompson in 2019, a tremendous procurement that included all remaining works in the family’s possession, numerous artist sketchbooks and the artworks’ intellectual property rights. In 2023, the gallery opened Bob Thompson: Agony & Ecstasy, which received widespread acclaim from critics and audiences.

Bob Thompson’s work is in museum collections worldwide including Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Little Rock, AR; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Colby College Museum of Art, Colby College, Waterville, ME; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, Jacksonville, FL; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, MI; Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC; He Art Museum (HEM), Beijiao, Shunde, Guangdong, China; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; Museum of Art, Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, NY; The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, FL; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, NC; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; The Newark Museum of Art, Newark, NJ; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA; The Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; The Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; Tougaloo College Art Collections, Tougaloo, MS; University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA; University of Louisville Art Collection, Louisville, KY; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC is the exclusive representative of the Estate of Bob Thompson.

SELECTED MUSEUM COLLECTIONS

Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Little Rock, AR
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR
Colby College Museum of Art, Colby College, Waterville, ME
Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH
Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, Jacksonville, FL
Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI
Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, MI
Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC
He Art Museum (HEM), Beijiao, Shunde, Guangdong, China
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN
The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC
Museum of Art, Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, NY
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, FL
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Museum of the National Center of Afro American Artists, Boston, MA
Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, NC
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ
New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA
The Newark Museum of Art, Newark, NJ
Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA
The Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
The Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY
The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY
Tougaloo College Art Collections, Tougaloo College, Tougaloo, MS
University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA
University of Louisville Art Collection, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

1958
Arts in Louisville Gallery, Louisville, KY

1960
Bob Thompson, Delancey Street Museum, New York, NY

1961
Recent Paintings, Superior Street Gallery, Chicago, IL

1963
Bob Thompson, The Drawing Shop, New York, NY
Bob Thompson, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, NY
El Cosario Gallery, Ibiza, Spain

1964
Painting and Drawings, Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago, IL; 1965
Bob Thompson: Gouaches, Paula Johnson (Cooper) Gallery, New York, NY

1965
East End Gallery, Provincetown, MA
Bob Thompson: Paintings, Donald Morris Gallery, Detroit, MI; 1970
Bob Thompson: New Paintings, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, NY

1968
Bob Thompson: Important Works in New York Collections, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, NY

1969
Bob Thompson: A Retrospective Exhibition, New School Art Center, New School for Social Research, New York, NY

1970
Paintings 1959-1966, Donald Morris Gallery, Detroit, MI

1971
Bob Thompson 1937-1966: Memorial Exhibition, J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY

1974
Bob Thompson, University Art Gallery, Herter Hall (now Herter Art Gallery), University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA

1975
Bob Thompson, National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
Bob Thompson: Selected Works on Paper 1960–1966, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, NY

1976
Bob Thompson 1937-66: A Tribute, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, NY

1978
The World of Bob Thompson, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY

1983
Bob Thompson 1937-1966: Major Works of the 60s, Vanderwoude-Tananbaum Gallery, New York, NY; 1986, 88, 90, 91

1986
Matrix 90, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT

1987
Bob Thompson 1937-1966: The Afro-European Connection, J.B. Speed Art Museum (now Speed Art Museum), Louisville, KY
Bob Thompson, Jamaica Arts Center, Jamaica, NY
Bomhard Theater, Louisville, KY

1990
Bob Thompson:, Vanderwoude Tananbaum Gallery, New York, NY

1991
Bob Thompson: Paintings, Vanderwoude Tananbaum Gallery, New York, NY

1997
Bob Thompson: Heroes, Martyrs, and Spectres, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY

1998
Bob Thompson: Fantastic Visions, Paintings & Drawings, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY
Bob Thompson, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI
Bob Thompson, Martha Henry, Inc. Fine Art, New York, NY

1999
Bob Thompson, G.R. N’Namdi Gallery, Birmingham, MI

2005
Bob Thompson: Meteor in a Black Hat, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY; Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI

2012
Seeking Bob Thompson: Dialogue/Object, Hite Art Institute, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY

2015
Naked at the Edge: Bob Thompson, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY

2018
Kunin Collection Focus: Bob Thompson, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN

2021
Bob Thompson: This House is Mine, Colby College Museum of Art, Colby College, Waterville, ME; Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles, CA

2023
Bob Thompson: Agony & Ecstasy, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY
Bob Thompson: So Let Us All Be Citizens, 52 Walker, New York, NY

1958
First 1958 Show, Provincetown Art Festival, Provincetown, MA
Second 1958 Show, Provincetown Art Association, Provincetown, MA
American Art of Our Time, Provincetown Arts Festival, Provincetown, MA
Drawings, City Gallery, New York, NY
1958 Louisville Art Center Annual, J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY

1959
Bob Thompson/Lester Johnson/Jay Milder, Ellison Gallery, Fort Worth, TX

1960
Jay Milder and Bob Thompson, Delancey Street Museum, New York NY
Jay Milder and Bob Thompson, Zabriskie Gallery, New York, NY
The Figure in Contemporary American Painting, organized by the American Federation of Arts, New York, NY; Sheldon Swope Art Gallery, Terre Haute, IN; Springfield Art Museum, Springfield, MO; Hollins College, Hollins, VA; State University of New York, Oswego, NY; Coe College, Cedar Rapids, IA; Winston-Salem Public Library, Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, NM; Tyler School of Fine Art, Philadelphia, PA; J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky
The Horace Richter Collection: Contemporary American Painting and Sculpture, Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC

1962
SOS Glacerie, Paris, France
Friendly Art Store, New York, NY

1963
Moods of Light, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI
17th Annual Art Exhibition and Sale of Contemporary Art, Downtown Community School, New York, NY

1964
Exhibition of Paintings: Peter Passuntino/Bob Thompson, City Gallery, New York, NY
Looking Back 1964-1949, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, NY
International Selection 1964-1965, Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, OH
…Some Negro Artists, Art Gallery, Fairleigh-Dickinson University, Rutherford, NJ
Seven Painters, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT
Christmas Exhibition, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, NY
Circulation Library Exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
The Bird in Art, The Audubon Society, New York, NY; The University of Arizona Art Gallery, Tucson, AZ
Cruz, Cox, Overstreet, Thompson, White, Whitten: Paintings, Antiquities, New York, NY
Artists for CORE: Third Annual Art Exhibition and Sale, Gallery of American Federation of Arts, American Federation of Arts, New York, NY

1965
Figuration, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, NY
Portraits in the American Art World, The New School, New York, NY
Second 1965 Show, Provincetown Art Association, Provincetown, MA
A Survey of Contemporary Art, J.B. Speed Museum Louisville, KY
Collector’s Choice, South Bend Art Center, South Bend, IL
Sixth Annual Arts Festival, Temple Emanu-El, Yonkers, NY
CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) Show, New York, NY
25th Annual Exhibition of the Society for Contemporary American Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

1966
New Figuration, Champlain Gallery, Harper College, SUNY, Binghamton, NY
The Negro in American Art, California Arts Commission, University of California, Davis, CA; Fine Arts Gallery, San Diego, CA; The Oakland Art Museum, Oakland, CA; Dickson Art Center, University of California, Los Angeles, CA
43 Artists from 18 Nations, The Brooklyn Center, Long Island University, Brooklyn, NY
The Harry N. Abrams Family Collection, The Jewish Museum, New York, NY

1967
Christmas Exhibition, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, NY
Friends of Bob Thompson Present a Group Memorial Exhibit, St. Mark’s Gallery, New York, NY

1968
The Humanist Tradition in Contemporary Painting, New School for Social Research, New York, NY
Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, New York
In Honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Black Artists in America: 19th and 20th Centuries, Wilcox Gallery, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA

1969
Afro-American Artists: Since 1950, Sixth Floor Art Gallery, Brooklyn College Student Center, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY
Ten Afro-American Artists, Dwight Art Memorial, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA
The Tenants of Sam Wapnowitz, Star Tuttle Gallery, New York, NY

1970
Afro-American Artists: New York and Boston, The Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, Boston, MA; School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, Boston, MA; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Dimensions of Black, La Jolla Museum of Art, LaJolla, CA
Untitled I, Art Lending Service, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

1971
Rebuttal to Whitney Museum Exhibition, Acts of Art Gallery, New York, NY
8 artistes afro-americains, Musée Rath, Geneva, Switzerland
The Martha Jackson Collection, Seibu Department Store, Tokyo, Japan

1972
Concept & Content: Cage, Thompson and Tapies, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, NY

1973
The Private Collection of Martha Jackson, University of Maryland Art Gallery, College Park, MD, Finch College Museum of Art, New York, NY; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY

1975
Contemporary Works on Paper for Purchase, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA

1977
Provincetown Painters: 1890s-1970s, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY
Perceptions of the Spirit in Twentieth Century American Art, Indianapolis Museum of Art and Graduate
Theological Union of Berkeley University Art Museum, Berkeley, CA, Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, TX; Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, Columbus, OH

1980
American Figurative Painting 1950-1980, Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA

1981
Image: Self Image, Pace University Art Gallery, New York, NY
The Sun Gallery, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA

1983
Celebrating Contemporary American Black Artists, Fine Arts Museum of Long Island, Hempstead, NY

1984
Underknown: 12 Artists Re-seen in 1984, Institute for Art and Urban Resources (P.S. 1), Long Island City, NY
The Figure in 20th Century American Art: Selections from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; The American Federation of Art, New York, NY

1985
Sam Gilliam & Bob Thompson, Miami-Dade Community College, Miami, FL
Martha Jackson Memorial Collection, National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC
Expressionism: An American Beginning, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA
The Gathering of the Avant-Garde: Lower East Side, Kenkeleba House, New York, NY

1986
Fetishes, Figures & Fantasies, Kenkeleba House, New York, NY
Kind of Blue: Benny Andrews, Emilio Cruz, Earle Pilgrim, Bob Thompson, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA; Northeastern University Art Gallery, Northeastern University, Boston, MA

1987
The Banks Family Collection, California Afro-American Museum, Los Angeles, CA
Image to Abstraction - The 50s, Luise Ross Gallery, New York, NY

1988
Works by Artists Who Are Black, Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AK
The Figurative Fifties, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, CA

1989
Figurative Work of the 50s and 60s, Vanderwoude-Tannanbaum Gallery, New York, NY
Don’t You Know By Now, curated by Ornette Coleman, Philippe Briet Gallery, New York, NY
Ruth S. Schaffner Collection, University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA

1990
Novae: William H. Johnson and Bob Thompson, California Afro-American Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Castellani Art Museum, Niagara University, NY; Montgomery Museum of Art, Montgomery, AL; Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH
Comparisons: An Exercise in Looking, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institute,
Washington, DC

1991
African American Artists of the Harlem Renaissance Period and later…, Sacks Fine Art Inc., New York, NY

1992
Color as a Subject, The Artists’ Museum, New York, NY
Paris Connections, Bomani Gallery, San Francisco, CA

1993
Free Within Ourselves, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC; IBM Gallery of Science and Art, New York, NY
Two Painters/Two Decades: Jan Muller and Bob Thompson, Vanderwoude-Tananbaum Gallery, New York, NY
Diversity and Style: African American Artists, The University of Michigan, Dearborn, MI

1994
African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY
Empowerment: The Art of African American Artists, Krasdale Gallery, White Plains, NY
The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African American Art, San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX; El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX; Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta, GA; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH; Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga, TN

1995
African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks II, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY; Long
Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA
Selected Pieces from the Permanent Collection, California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA

1996
African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks III, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY
Collecting African-American Expressions, Carver Federal Savings Bank, New York, NY
The Walter O. Evans Collection of African-American Art, Hofstra Museum, Hempstead, NY
The Elegance of Memory, Skoto Gallery, New York, NY

1997
African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks IV, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY; Fisk University Galleries, Nashville, TN
Facets of the Figure: A Spectrum of 20th Century American Art, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY

1998
African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, V, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY; Newcomb Art Gallery, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA
Fifty Years of American Drawings, Danese Gallery, New York, NY
Twentieth Century American Drawings: From the Arkansas Arts Center Foundation Collection, Arkansas Arts Center, Arkansas, AK; Sunrise Museum, Charleston, WV; Philharmonic Center for the Arts, Naples, FL; Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN; Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN; Boise Art Museum, Boise, ID
Art by African-Americans, New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ

1999
The American Century: Art and Culture 1900-2000, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, VI, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY; Flint Institute of Art, Flint, MI

2000
Bob Thompson and Jan Muller, Lori Bookstein Fine Art, New York, NY
African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, VII, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY;
Appleton Museum of Art, Florida State University and Central Florida Community College, Ocala, FL
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery: The First Decade, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY
The Figure, Another Side of Modernism, Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island, NY
Twentieth-Century American Art: The Ebsworth Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA
Search for the Unicorn, Lori Bookstein Fine Art, New York, NY
A Brush with the Past, G.R. N’Namdi Gallery, Birmingham, MI

2001
Jazz and Visual Improvisation, Katonah Art Museum, Katonah, NY
African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, VIII, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY; Texas
Southern University Museum, Houston, TX
Out of the Fifties–Into the Sixties: Six Figurative Expressionists, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY

2002
Modernism & Abstraction: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Academy of
Design, New York, NY
African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, IX, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY; Tubman
African American Museum, Macon, GA
Think Small: Little Treasures from the Permanent Collection, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL; Mennello Museum of Art, Orlando, FL

2003
African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, X, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY
A Century of Collecting: African American Art in the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

2004
Embracing the Muse: Africa and African American Art, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY
Smart Collecting: Acquisitions 1990-2004, The Smart Museum, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL

2005
Syncopated Rhythms: 20th Century African American Art from the George and Joyce Wein Collection, Boston University Art Gallery, Boston University, Boston, MA
Eye Contact: Painting and Drawing in American Art, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY

2006
Recent Acquisitions: Bob Thompson and Viktor Schreckengost, Smithsonian Archives of American Art, New York, NY
Think Small: Little Treasures from the Permanent Collection, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL

2007
Crossing the Line: African American Artists in the Jacqueline Bradley and Clarence Otis, Jr. Collection, The George D. and Harriet W. Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, Winter Park, FL
Body Beware: 18 American Artists, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY
Figuratively Speaking, ACME Fine Art, Boston, MA
A Foreign Affair: American Artists Abroad, Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC; Pensacola Museum of Art, Pensacola, FL

2008
African American Art: 200 Years, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY
A Thousand Kisses: Love Letters from the Archives of American Art, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.
Highlights: African American Art from the Norton Collection, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL

2009
Larry and Brenda Thompson Collection, David C. Driskell Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Il Secolo del Jazz: Arte, Cinema, Musica e Fotografia da Picasso a Basquiat (The Jazz Century: Art, Cinema, Music and Photography from Picasso to Basquiat), Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rovereto, Italy; Museé du quai Branly, Paris, France; Centre de Cultura Contemporània, Barcelona, Spain
Collecting African American Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
After Image, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, NY

2010
Richard & Mary Gray Collection, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

2011
Building the Contemporary Collection: Five Years of Acquisitions, Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, NC

2012
African American Art in the 20th Century, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
Tides of Provincetown: Pivotal Years in America’s Oldest Continuous Art Colony (1899-2011), The New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT; Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, PA; Cape Code Museum of Art, Dennis, MA
Group Shoe, Gavin Brown's enterprise, New York, NY
Tradition Redefined: The Larry and Brenda Thompson Collection of African American Art, Rice University Art Gallery, Houston, TX
Blues for Smoke, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Wexner Center for the Arts, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
INsite/INchelsea: The Inaugural Exhibition, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY
Ashé to Amen: African-Americans and Biblical Imagery, Museum of Biblical Art, New York, NY; Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture; Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Memphis, TN
Say it Loud: Art by African and African-American Artists in the Collection, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL

2013
Circa 1960, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL

2014
Face Value: Portraiture in the Age of Abstraction, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
Witness: Art and Civil Rights in The Sixties, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, NH; The Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX
Shaping a Collection: Five Decades of Gifts, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Conversations: African and African American Artworks in Dialogue, from the Collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and Camille O. and William H. Cosby Jr., Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC

2015
Represent: 200 Years of African American Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
REMIX: Themes & Variations in African American Art, Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC

2016
The Color Line: African American Artists and the Civil Rights in the United States, Musee du Quai Branly, Paris, France
Tightrope Walk: Painted Images After Abstraction, White Cube Bermondsey, London, England
Beat Generation, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
Modern Heroics: 75 Years of African-American Expressionism, The Newark Museum, Newark, NJ
Entanglements, Luhring Augustine, New York, NY

2017
Inventing Downtown: Artist-Run Galleries in New York City, 1952-1965, Grey Art Gallery, New York University, New York, NY; New York University, Abu Dhabi Art Gallery, United Arab Emirates
Picturing Mississippi: Land of Plenty, Pain and Promise, Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS
Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, Tate Modern, London, England
Sputterances, Metro Pictures, New York, NY
Expanding Tradition: Selections from the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Collection, Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA
Regarding the Figure, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY
Visionary Painting: Curated by Alex Katz, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME
Color People, Rental Gallery, East Hampton, NY
Victors for Art: Michigan’s Alumni Collectors, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI
Figuratively Speaking, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY

2018
Transformative Space: The N’Namdi Collection, August Wilson Center for African American Culture, Pittsburgh, PA
Something to Say: The McNay Presents 100 Years of African American Art, McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX
Kunin Collection Focus: Bob Thompson, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN

2019
Black Refractions: Highlights from The Studio Museum in Harlem, Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA; Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC; Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI; Smith College Museum of Art, Smith College, Northampton, MA; Utah Museum of Fine Arts, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT; Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA
Spilling Over: Painting Color in the 1960s, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Alvaro Barrington: Artists I Steal From, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London, England
Detroit Collects: Selections of African American Art from Private Collections, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI
Downtown Painting, presented by Alex Katz, Peter Freeman, Inc., New York, NY
The Power of Our Own Spirit: Mental Health and Artists of the American South, TJC Gallery, The Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, SC
Afrocosmologies: American Reflections, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT
African American Art in the 20th Century, organized by Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Dubuque Museum of Art, Dubuque, IA; Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, Winter Park, FL; The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, PA; Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, KS; Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY

2020
Tell Me Your Story: 100 Years of Storytelling in African American Art, curated by Rob Perrée, Kunsthal KAde, Amersfoort, The Netherlands
Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition, curated by Adrienne L. Childs, The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC
Paper Power, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY
Duro Olowu: Seeing Chicago, curated by Duro Olowu, The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL
The Real Thing, Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC

2021
The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, CO
Enduring Voices: African American Art from the David R. and Susan S. Goode Collection, Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA
Wild and Brilliant: The Martha Jackson Gallery and Post-War Art, Hollis Taggart Gallery, New York, NY
A Drawing Show, Paula Cooper Gallery, Palm Beach, FL
Rested, Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York, NY

2022
Elegy: Lament in the 20th Century, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
New York: 1962-1964, The Jewish Museum, New York, NY
America: Between Dreams and Realities, Selections from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada
When We See Us, The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA), Cape Town, South Africa; Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland
Summer At Its Best, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY
MAD WOMEN: Kornblee, Jackson, Saidenberg, and Ward, Art Dealers on Madison Avenue in the 1960s, David Nolan Gallery, New York, NY
Borrow and Steal: Appropriation from the Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, FL

2023
In Search of the Miraculous, Marlborough Gallery, New York, NY
Relaunch Laboratory, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA
Louisville’s Black Avant-Garde: Professor Robert L. Douglas, Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY
Black Artists in America: From Civil Rights to the Bicentennial, Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, TN

2024
Americans in Paris: Artists Working in Postwar France, 1946–1962, Grey Art Gallery, New York University, New York, NY
Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists since 1940, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, TX
Worldviews, Art Institute of Chicago Library, Chicago, IL