
Four Freedoms
Date
June 26, 2025 - Aug. 15, 2025
Location
KCAI Gallery | 4415 Warwick Blvd, Kansas City, MO 64111, USA
Created by For Freedoms, with Hank Willis Thomas and Emily Shur, in collaboration with Eric Gottesman and Wyatt Gallery.
For Freedoms is an artist-led collective that uses art to inspire civic engagement and conversation. Their work highlights the diversity of America through nonpartisan, creative interventions.
The Four Freedoms Photographs are reinterpretations of American artist Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms paintings; representing the eponymous Four Freedoms coined by former President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his 1941 State of the Union Address — freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. By framing artists, activists, community organizers, and friends within these iconic works, For Freedoms modernized American imagery and sparked civic engagement by declaring diversity an essential and undeniable component of freedom.
Once created, the images were reproduced and distributed nationwide as billboards, artworks, posters and more as part of the organization’s 2018 50 State Initiative - named the largest creative collaboration in US history and featured on the cover of Time Magazine. In 2023, the Four Freedoms Photographs traveled to Athens, Lisbon, Geneva and Washington, DC at the Smithsonian Museum of American History as part of the permanent collection of the US Department of State Art In Embassies Democracy Collection.
This traveling exhibition commemorated the 60th Anniversary of the Office of Art in Embassies, established by President John F. Kennedy to create cross-cultural dialogues and foster mutual understanding through the visual arts. For Freedoms co-founder Hank Willis Thomas was also honored with 2023 U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts, an award created by Art in Embassies, in partnership with the Secretary of State to formally acknowledge artists who have played an exemplary role in advancing the U.S. Department of State’s mission to promote cultural diplomacy around the globe.
"For Freedoms deepens civic engagement through the arts. We provide artists, institutions, and communities a decentralized space for connection, and the tools to support their creative capacities and resilience as cultural producers. Together, our network is building more robust civic dialogue, and inspiring a sense of belonging and responsibility for one another. Our vision is of a joyful, interconnected world where creativity is seen as integral to enhancing civic expression, listening, healing, and justice."