{"id":272335,"date":"2025-06-04T08:27:15","date_gmt":"2025-06-04T08:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/aerospace\/the-d-c-street-where-pioneering-abstract-artist-alma-thomas-lived-for-70-years-has-been-renamed-in-her-honor\/"},"modified":"2025-06-04T08:27:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T08:27:15","slug":"the-d-c-street-where-pioneering-abstract-artist-alma-thomas-lived-for-70-years-has-been-renamed-in-her-honor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=272335","title":{"rendered":"The D.C. Street Where Pioneering Abstract Artist Alma Thomas Lived for 70 Years Has Been Renamed in Her Honor"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Women Who Shaped History<\/a><\/p>\n

A Smithsonian<\/i> magazine special report<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Thomas worked as an art teacher at the city\u2019s public schools for 35 years before dedicating herself to painting full-time when she was in her 60s<\/h2>\n
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Eli Wizevich<\/a><\/p>\n

– History Correspondent<\/span><\/p>\n

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D.C. Councilmember Christina Henderson; Charles Thomas Lewis, Alma Thomas’ grandnephew; D.C. Councilmember\u00a0Brooke Pinto; and Susan Talley, founder of Friends of Alma Thomas
\n Christina Henderson<\/span>
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Two months before she died,\u00a0Alma Thomas<\/a> invited the art critic\u00a0Eleanor Munro<\/a> to her red brick house in Washington, D.C.\u2019s Logan Circle neighborhood.<\/p>\n

It was late 1977, and Munro was conducting research for her book\u00a0Originals: American Women Artists<\/em><\/a>, a collection of interviews with the likes of\u00a0Georgia O\u2019Keeffe<\/a> and\u00a0Louise Bourgeois<\/a>. Although Thomas had found fame comparatively late in life, following her retirement from art teaching in 1960, her abstract art was truly original. In beads, strings and blotches of color, her paintings seemed to capture the refracted rainbows contained in every ray of light.<\/p>\n

The small house was \u201ccrammed with paintings and an orderly richness of books, papers [and] artists\u2019 announcements,\u201d as Munro wrote in her book, per an excerpt published in the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em><\/a> <\/em>in 1979. Thomas pointed out a holly tree pressed against the front windows.<\/p>\n

About a decade earlier, Thomas had noticed the light filtering through the leaves and glass. \u201cI looked at the tree in the window, and that became my inspiration,\u201d she recalled. \u201cThere are six patterns in there right now that I can see. And every morning since then, the wind has given me new colors through the window panes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Decades after that tree inspired Thomas\u2019 late-career success\u2014which included a\u00a0solo exhibition<\/a> at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York at age 77 and a\u00a0painting<\/a> in the White House\u2019s collections\u2014the artist\u2019s former home still stands.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At a ceremony on May 21, members of the D.C. Council, as well as friends and family of Thomas, gathered on the street where Thomas worked and lived for nearly 70 years to\u00a0officially designate<\/a> it \u201cAlma Thomas Way.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Alma Thomas shown with two of her paintings that were part of an exhibition of her work at Howard University Art Gallery in Washington, D.C. on April 20, 1966<\/p>\n

Ellsworth Davis \/ The Washington Post via Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWhen we do these street renaming projects, it\u2019s in honor of individuals, but it\u2019s also in an effort to try to elevate and introduce local heroes to folks for the next generation,\u201d councilmember Christina Henderson, who co-introduced the bill to name the street in Thomas\u2019 honor, tells\u00a0Culture Type<\/em><\/a>\u2019s Victoria L. Valentine.<\/p>\n

Thomas was born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1891. Her family moved to D.C. in 1906 and soon purchased the red brick home on 15th Street.<\/p>\n

In 1924, Thomas became the first graduate of\u00a0Howard University<\/a>\u2019s fine arts program and embarked on a 35-year career as an art teacher at Shaw Junior High School in D.C.\u2019s Shaw neighborhood.<\/p>\n

During those years, she managed to earn a master\u2019s degree in arts education from Columbia University, study art at American University and become the founding vice president of the\u00a0Barnett-Aden Gallery<\/a>, one of the first Black-owned art galleries in the United States, established in 1943.<\/p>\n

But it was only after her retirement in 1960 that Thomas could dedicate herself to painting full time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s remarkable, you know, the late-career explosion of creativity, where her whole artistic process transformed,\u201d\u00a0Melissa Ho<\/a>, the curator of 20th-century art at the\u00a0Smithsonian American Art Museum<\/a>, told\u00a0Smithsonian<\/em> magazine<\/a>\u2019s Shantay Robinson in 2023.<\/p>\n

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Alma Thomas’ former home in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Thomas became renowned for her abstract art that focused on the glittering side of life.<\/p>\n

For Thomas, beauty was restorative. It healed. It transcended politics and history. \u201cThrough color, I have sought to concentrate on beauty and happiness, rather than on man\u2019s inhumanity to man,\u201d Thomas said in 1970.<\/p>\n

Snoopy\u2009\u2013\u2009Early Sun Display on Earth<\/em><\/a> from that same year exemplifies her iconic \u201cAlma\u2019s Stripes<\/a>,\u201d colorful vertical patterns that form a sun of many colors. Later works, such as 1976\u2019s\u00a0Hydrangeas Spring Song<\/em><\/a>, suggest new directions her artistic development may have taken.<\/p>\n

Thomas died two years later at age 86. \u201cThe uncompleted arc of her talent makes her a perennial artist\u2019s artist, consulted by young abstract painters even now,\u201d wrote Peter Schjeldahl for the\u00a0New Yorker<\/em><\/a> in 2016.<\/p>\n

With a street named in her honor and her house of nearly 70 years on the\u00a0National Register of Historic Places<\/a>, her contributions to her community have endured, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love Alma Thomas. I love her work. I love who she was as a person. She was a real model of what you would want to be,\u201d Susan Talley, founder of the Friends of Alma Thomas group, said at the dedication ceremony last month, per Culture Type<\/em>. \u201cI would never have thought we could have had a street named for her. So thank you for coming and sharing in my enthusiasm.\u201d<\/p>\n

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