In winter 2025/26, the legendary Grand Palais in Paris transforms its monumental hall into a powerful panorama of contemporary visual language: From 17 December 2025 to 5 April 2026, the American artist Mickalene Thomas presents her most comprehensive retrospective to date at the French exhibition venue under the title All About Love, making art history in the process. She is the first African American artist to be honored with a major solo exhibition at the Grand Palais.
All About Love is far more than a classic retrospective survey; it is a universe of paintings, photo collages, installations and video works that bring together more than two decades of Thomas’ artistic practice. With her characteristically prism-rich aesthetic, she explores the visibility of Black women within the art canon - and celebrates beauty, strength and sustainability as revolutionary figures within historical discourse.
The exhibition weaves together images of friends, family, companions and icons with elements of art history. In opulent compositions, often embellished with rhinestones, Thomas invites viewers to enter spaces in which pleasure, love and self-determination are not merely motifs, but are understood as political acts.
A central theme of the exhibition is love as an emancipatory force - a motif that also gives the exhibition its title. Inspired by bell hooks’ seminal book All About Love: New Visions (1999), Thomas understands love as a transformative impulse capable of reshaping both individual and collective life.
For anyone visiting Paris this season, this exhibition is an unmissable moment. It not only offers a profound insight into the work of one of the most important voices in contemporary art, but also addresses questions of identity, empowerment and cultural agency at a time when these concepts carry more weight than ever.