Davidson College art exhibit reimagines, repairs history

DAVIDSON COLLEGE

Hank Willis Thomas’ “What Happened On That Day Really Set Me on a Path” is among the art on exhibit through Feb. 1, 2026 at Van Every/Smith Galleries at Davidson College.

An exhibit at Davidson College looks at art’s role in reimagining history, memory and repair.

“We The People,” on display at Van Every/Smith Galleries through Feb. 1, 2026, is a solo exhibition by Hank Willis Thomas that explores the role of art as cultural institutions to examine their own histories. The exhibit coincides with the dedication of “With These Hands: A Memorial to the Enslaved and Exploited,” a permanent campus memorial that tells Davidson’s slave-related history more fully by acknowledging the labor of enslaved people who helped build and sustain the college. 

Davidson didn’t own slaves outright, but its founders, early presidents, and faculty  did. It paid local slave owners for the labor of enslaved people for maintenance and domestic work. 

“We The People,” the culmination of 15 years of work across sculpture, textiles, neon, lenticular and retroreflective installations, conveys how collective memory is constructed and who has been excluded, while looking toward repair and reconciliation. 

While the exhibit’s words affirm that U.S. government power is legally derived from its citizens, at the nation’s founding large swaths were locked out — namely the enslaved, indigenous people, and women. 

Other exhibition highlights include:

• The primary subject of “What Happened On That Day Really Set Me on a Path” is 15-year-old Dorothy Counts, captured in Don Sturkey’s 1957 Charlotte Observer black-and-white photograph as she desegregated Harding High School as its first Black student. 

Counts withdrew after four days due to intense harassment. 

• The piece “Justice’ is composed of red and white stripes of decommissioned U.S. flags. When viewed up close, they look like geometric quilt designs but at a distance, the viewer is reminded of the power of perspective to alter an experience. 

• In “Powerfuless,” Thomas creates a printed image that changes when viewed from different angles. As the viewer moves, the text transforms; from one angle, the word “powerful” appears while “powerless” is seen from another.

• A neon piece alternates between the words “off-white” and “pitch-black” in “Pitch Blackness Off Whiteness,” which exposes the instability of racial signifiers and the ways identity can be flattened through language.  

Comments