Image: Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth
The exhibition runs from November 7, 2026, through November 2027.
Titled ‘Lava Thomas: In Our Own Regard,’ the exhibition examines how portraiture can preserve individual and collective histories while addressing visibility, memory and embodied presence. Thomas brings her personal archive of family photographs—on which her drawings are based—into conversation with the Carter’s collection. Her large-scale drawings and portraiture explore visibility, memory and embodied presence through the relationship between those personal photographs and the museum’s holdings.
At the center of the installation is ‘Looking Back II’ (2015), a graphite, charcoal, watercolor and conté pencil work on paper recently acquired by the Carter.
‘Looking Back II’ is presented alongside seven additional large-scale portraits and a newly commissioned, artist-designed wallpaper. The wallpaper features historic negatives from the Carter’s Mary Everhard Collection, which documents Black ‘Exoduster’ communities in early-20th-century Kansas.
Together, the works assert the presence and dignity of people often left out of American history.
