Mott-Warsh Collection

"Alma Woodsey Thomas had her first one-woman show at the age of 68 and developed her style in retirement. Despite her belated start, Thomas went on to have retrospectives at Washington, D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery of Art and the National Museum of American Art. She was the first African American woman to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art and her work has been shown at the White House on three occasions.

[...] Thomas’ early art creations were naturalistic and in the figurative tradition, however at Howard University she became fascinated by abstraction. When she was invited to exhibit her art at Howard in 1966, Thomas decided to experiment with a new approach that would lead to the type of painting for which she is best known today: large canvases filled with dense, irregular patterns made by brushes heavily laden with bright colors. Thomas' mature work has been compared with Byzantine mosaics, the pointillist technique of Georges Seurat, and the paintings of the Washington Color School, yet her work is quite distinctive." - Excerpt from the label of this artwork in the exhibition "Voice and Visibility: 25 Years of the Mott-Warsh Collection" curated by Stephanie James at MW Gallery in downtown Flint, MI, on view Feb. 12 - Aug. 22, 2026.

Featured artwork details: Alma W. Thomas, “Dahlias in the Fall”, 1969, Acrylic on canvas, 24 in. x 36 in. © Charles Thomas Lewis

MW Gallery hours: Thursdays 11AM-6PM, Fridays 11AM-6PM, and Saturdays, 11AM-5PM
815 S. Saginaw St. Flint, MI 48502
Admission is always free.

This week the gallery is open regular hours Thursday 5/21 and Friday 5/22 11:00AM-6:00PM, but will be closed Saturday 5/23 in observance of Memorial Day. Have a warm and sunny weekend!

Congratulations Tara! Our 20,000th visitor! We had such fun handing out goodie bags and trying to anticipate when our special guest would wall through the doors. Thank you to ALL of MW Gallery's 20,000 visitors over the past 10 years. You rock!

See you this Friday for Flint ARTWALK! MW Gallery will be receiving its 20,000th visitor sometime that evening! Will it be you? We have a special surprise for the 20,000th visitor, as well as the first 25 visitors through the door at 6pm will receive a small thank you gift as a token of our appreciation for 10 years of being able to share art from the Mott-Warsh Collection with you.

"Fashion is Art" - this year's Met Gala theme - has got us looking at the fashion "in" art, like this piece by Fabrice Monteiro. See any Met Gala attendees who stole this look?

Image: Fabrice Monteiro, "Signare, lle de Goree #1", 2011, Digital C-print, 31 1/4 x 23 1/4 x 1 ¾” © Fabrice Monteiro

"Fabrice Monteiro is an artist practicing photojournalism, fashion photography, and portraiture. His photographs are especially noted for their rich, lush color and provocative subjects.

Signares were a society of mixed-raced women, born of unions between European settlers and African women, who rose from the 17th century onward as figures of power, refinement, and ambiguity within the tumult of colonial history. Many of these women became astute negotiators of commerce and trade—including at times, human beings. In a male dominated world, they transformed their marginal position into a space of influence, combining elegance, intelligence, and strategy. In his lavishly adorned reinterpretation of their stories, Monteiro confronts the complexity of Africa’s histories." - Excerpt from the artwork label on view now through Aug. 22, 2026 as part of the exhibit "Voice and Visibility: 25 Years of the Mott-Warsh Collection" curated by Stephanie James at MW Gallery in Flint, MI.