Hank Willis Thomas brings two decades of critical image-making to the Zimmerli Art Museum, where love, power and the politics of representation collide.
16 September 2026
What does it mean to love in a world shaped by power, inequality and inherited histories? For Hank Willis Thomas, love is not simply a feeling. It is a radical proposition, a form of resistance and a way of imagining what a more just future might look like.
‘Hank Willis Thomas: LOVERULES, Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family’ marks the East Coast debut of this major exhibition at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University. Bringing together nearly 90 works spanning two decades, the exhibition traces the American conceptual artist and activist’s incisive engagement with race, identity, consumer culture and social justice.
Drawing from advertising, popular imagery and the visual language of protest, Thomas transforms familiar symbols into provocative reflections on the structures that shape everyday life. His work asks us to reconsider whose stories are made visible, whose bodies are represented and how images can become instruments of change.
‘LOVERULES’ offers an expansive encounter with an artist whose practice insists that art can challenge power while opening space for connection, dignity and collective possibility.
This exhibition is on view at the Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University until 20 December 2026.
