Paris hasn’t seen anything quite like the groundbreaking ‘All About Love’ queer artists’ textured, colorful, sparkling work.
Artist Mickalene Thomas is making Black history in Paris. Thomas will be taking her “All About Love” exhibit to the Grand Palais from December 17, 2025 through April 5, 2026. The retrospective is the first major show at the Grand Palais to honor an African-American artist and features Thomas’ vivid paintings, collages, photography, video, and installations that center Black women, queer desire, and pleasure as political acts.
Thomas has built this show around the idea of love as liberation, drawing explicitly on bell hooks’ iconic book “All About Love: New Visions” and recasting art-history touchstones through a Black feminist lens. Works in the exhibition rethink canonical European paintings — think Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1863) and Ingres’s La Grande Odalisque (1814) — placing Black women where they were historically excluded and turning glamour into a form of reclamation.
The Paris installation follows acclaimed presentations at The Broad (Los Angeles), The Barnes Foundation (Philadelphia), Hayward Gallery (London), and Les Abattoirs (Toulouse) and is billed as the most ambitious showing of Thomas’ work in Paris. Organizers said the pieces invite visitors into worlds where pleasure becomes political and representation becomes radical,” using rhinestones, lush patterning, and large-scale portraiture.
On the milestone, Thomas shared in a statement, “I am deeply humbled and profoundly honored to present my work at the Grand Palais – an institution that holds such an important place in the history of art. To stand here as a Black queer woman, and to share All About Love in this space, is both a personal and collective moment of triumph. This exhibition is a testament to the power of representation, resilience, and love.”
