The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Miami has opened "Mildred Thompson: Frequencies," the first comprehensive retrospective of the late artist Mildred Thompson (1936–2003). Spanning five decades, the exhibition brings together 49 works—including wood assemblages, monochromatic prints, and oversized triptychs—sourced from the artist's estate and Galerie Lelong & Co. It traces Thompson's career as she moved between the United States and Germany, highlighting her stylistic evolution and her deep engagement with abstraction, science, and spirituality. The show follows earlier focused presentations like "Against the Grain" (2018) at the New Orleans Museum of Art and the 2017 "Magnetic Fields" exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
This retrospective matters because it grants Thompson the artistic complexity often denied to marginalized creators, letting her work—rather than her identity as a queer Black woman—drive the narrative. By linking disparate periods and styles, the exhibition challenges the tendency to pigeonhole artists from underrepresented groups and expands Thompson's visibility in the art historical canon. It also underscores the ongoing reevaluation of overlooked Black abstractionists and the importance of institutional support for artists who faced systemic racism, as Thompson did when a gallerist suggested she find a white artist to front for her.