Alma Thomas spent nearly 70 years living on 15th Street NW in Washington, D.C.—a street that now bears her name. The pioneering abstract painter’s former block, between Church Street and Q Street, has officially been renamed “Alma Thomas Way.”
At a ceremony on May 21st, members of the D.C. Council joined friends and family of the artist and local arts advocates to unveil the new street signs. The event was led by council members Christina Henderson and Brooke Pinto, who co-sponsored a bill recognizing Thomas’s legacy in the Logan Circle neighborhood.
“When we do these street renaming projects, it’s in honor of individuals, but it’s also in an effort to try to elevate and introduce local heroes to folks for the next generation,” Henderson told Culture Type.
Born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1891, Thomas moved with her family to Washington, D.C., in 1906. The following year, her parents purchased the red brick house on 15th Street NW that would remain her home for nearly seven decades. Thomase graduated from Howard University’s fine arts program in 1924 and went on to teach art at Shaw Junior High School, while also earning a master’s degree in arts education from Columbia University. During this time, she served as the founding vice president of the Barnett-Aden Gallery, one of the first Black-owned art galleries in the United States.
Thomas retired from teaching in 1960 to focus on her painting. She became known for her color field works, often composed of vibrant, blotch-like marks. Her paintings transformed natural scenes into rhythmic patterns of light and color. She would become closely associated with a local collective of Black artists known as the Little Paris Group, as well as the Washington Color School.
In 1972, the Whitney Museum of American Art mounted a solo exhibition of her paintings—the first at the institution dedicated to a Black woman. At the time, Thomas was in her early eighties. That same year, the artist was the subject of another major exhibition in Washington, D.C., at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. On September 9, 1972, the then-mayor of D.C., Walter Washington, announced that September 9th would be “Alma W. Thomas Day.” The artist passed away in 1978 at the age of 86.
Thomas’s profile has remained high since her death. In addition to the new street renaming, she has been recently recognized in Washington, D.C., by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which mounted the solo exhibition “Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas”in 2023. Currently traveling, the exhibition will open at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields on June 27th.
