HANK WILLIS THOMAS

Art Production Fund and Rockefeller Center are pleased to announce the latest Art in Focus program by New York-based artist Hank Willis Thomas. Thomas’ work will transform the public spaces of Rockefeller Center with richly patterned quilts made of sports jerseys and sculptures inspired by athletic symbolism.

Thomas’ work will be on view from July 6 through October 6, 2026. Viewers will discover Thomas’ work in the public spaces of 45 Rockefeller Plaza, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, 50 Rockefeller Plaza, 10 Rockefeller Plaza, and 1 Rockefeller Plaza.

This Art in Focus exhibition coincides with the celebration of the FIFA World Cup 26™ and will be on display during the official NYNJ World Cup 26 & Telemundo Fan Village at Rockefeller Center from July 6 through July 19, 2026.

Hank Willis Thomas lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, working across a range of media including photography, sculpture, screen-printing, neon, mixed media, and installation art. His work explores themes of perspective, identity, commodity, media, and popular culture. This exhibition highlights the artist’s longstanding interest in sports, emphasizing the intersection of identity, athletics, and politics. With baseball, basketball, and soccer at the forefront, the works on view examine the powerful role these games have played throughout history and in society today.

Drawing on quilt traditions of the African American South, Thomas uses sports jerseys as the primary medium throughout the exhibition. The jerseys invite viewers to consider the bodies that have historically worn these uniforms, addressing the visual systems that have helped perpetuate inequality. Deconstructed and reassembled, the jerseys are transformed into art historical references, abstract patterns, and silhouettes of celebrated athletes. One example of this is in Thomas’ That’s Game (2021), an outdoor mural of 50 Rockefeller Plaza that reimagines the NBA’s current logo in jerseys from All-Star players throughout the league’s history.

At 45 Rockefeller Plaza, a large-scale vinyl installation features Guernica (2016), a mural-size quilt with dynamic composition and colorful jerseys, inspired by Pablo Picasso’s monumental 1937 painting of the same name. By engaging with European artists including Picasso and Matisse, both who drew on early twentieth-century modernist appropriations of African art, Thomas links the politics of sports and war with the politics of art and art history.

Embedded within the lobby vitrines of 45 Rockefeller Plaza are sculptures from Thomas’s Punctum series, which portray powerful gestures by athletes. Visitors are invited to experience the weight and significance of a single detail from a scene recreated at life-size scale. Sculptural works include Liberty (2015) and Perseverance (2017), presented in dialogue with imagery from Thomas’s two-dimensional works. The sculptures are installed within vitrines wrapped in images of Thomas’ quilted baseball and basketball jerseys, as well as a background detail from Thomas’s retroreflective artwork Success is no accident (2026). A screenprint on retroreflective vinyl incorporating archival photographs of Jackie Robinson, “This ain't fun. But you watch me, I'll get it done.” (blue, gold, red, white on blue), (2026), is displayed in the center baseball-themed vitrine.