Broad Adds Mickalene Thomas' "Charnel House"
Mickalene Thomas, The Charnel House (Resist #5) , 2021. The Broad The Broad has acquired its fourth work by Mickalene Thomas. The Charnel House (Resist #5) is an 11+ ft wide collage painting referencing Picasso's unfinished 1944–45 work , now at MoMA. Picasso was reacting to news photos of bodies in German death camps, hence the black-and-white palette. Thomas' picture collages photos and signs pertaining to the Black Panthers and a history of unjustified police slayings of Black men. The Charnel House is the fifth of a series of Resist paintings inaugurated in 2017. They were considered a departure for Thomas, being explicitly political and incorporating vintage photographs. The Charnel House was lent to the Broad's 2024 Mickalene Thomas show and will appear in a new exhibition this fall, "Has the myth been shattered" (opening Nov. 21, 2026). Mickalene Thomas, Resist , 2017
