HARLEM, NY.- One of many inaugural exhibitions presented in the Studio Museum in Harlem’s new building, Tom Lloyd is a comprehensive display of the work of Tom Lloyd (1929–1996), the artist, educator, and activist whose innovative practice was the subject of the institution’s opening exhibition in 1968.
When the Studio Museum opened in a rented loft on Fifth Avenue, its first solo exhibition was Electronic Refractions II, a presentation of Lloyd’s colorful abstract sculptures with lights that flashed in electronically programmed patterns. Lloyd began making these works in 1965 with Alan Sussman, an engineer at Radio Corporation of America (RCA), in a trailblazing cross-disciplinary collaboration that bridged the gap between the arts and sciences. This was one year before a group of artists and engineers founded the organization Experiments in Art and Technology (E. A.T.) to encourage partnerships between these fields. Inspired by everyday urban sights such as traffic signals and theater marquees, Lloyd fabricated his sculptures with common objects, including Christmas lights and plastic Buick backup-light covers, and materials sourced from RCA.
Thelma Golden, Ford Foundation Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, said, “When the founders of the Studio Museum in Harlem inaugurated this institution with the work of Tom Lloyd, they were boldly declaring that this Museum would be a sanctuary for artists of African descent in all its manifestations. In doing so, they were actively writing new art histories by reimagining and expanding the ways in which Black art could be understood. Today, we open our new building with Tom Lloyd as a way to honor our legacy and make the same claim our founders did: that the Studio Museum in Harlem is the place where Black art, defined dynamically and broadly, lives.”
Connie H. Choi, Curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem, said, “Tom Lloyd was a truly pioneering artist who gained almost immediate recognition for his electronic light sculptures in the mid- to late-1960s. Despite this, Electronic Refractions II was the last institutional solo presentation of Lloyd’s work. It therefore was critical that one of our inaugural shows would be dedicated to Lloyd, especially at a moment when his work is starting to resurface thanks to art historians, scholars, conservators, and contemporary artists. With this expansive exhibition, we not only bring Lloyd into the spotlight, but position him as an artist, educator, and activist at the forefront of art history.”
Installed in the Museum’s third-floor gallery, which features a barrel-vaulted, double-height ceiling, the exhibition presents twenty-one works by Lloyd, including electronic sculptures, wall-mounted sculptures made from found metal parts, and works on paper created from the 1960s to the 1980s. The exhibition also displays a selection of archival reproductions documenting Lloyd’s extensive activism with the Art Workers’ Coalition, a group of artists, critics, filmmakers, and museum professionals who advocated for artist rights and more inclusive museums, and chronicles the artist’s leadership of the Store Front Museum/Paul Robeson Theatre in Queens—the borough’s first art museum—which Lloyd founded in 1971 and directed for sixteen years.
Accompanying the exhibition is a catalogue of the same name, designed by Miko McGinty Inc. and copublished with Gregory R. Miller & Co., with new essays by Studio Museum Curator Connie H. Choi, conservator Reinhard Bek, art historian Krista Thompson, former Studio Museum Senior Curatorial Assistant Habiba Hopson, and artists Paul Stephen Benjamin, Nikita Gale, and Glenn Ligon. Tom Lloyd is the first catalogue on the innovative artist and features an exclusive selection of never-before-seen images that chronicle Lloyd’s career, including photographs of the artist collaborating with engineer Alan Sussman, nonextant works, and past installations.
Tom Lloyd is organized by Curator Connie H. Choi. Exhibition support and organization of Store Front Museum materials provided by former Senior Curatorial Assistant Habiba Hopson. Special thanks to Charmaine Branch, Sasha Cordingley, Amber Edmond, Abigail Gordon, Jordan Jones, Zuna Maza, and Meg Whiteford. Exhibition design by AD—WO.
Tom Lloyd (1929–1996) was selected as the inaugural artist for the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Studio Program—one of the Museum's founding initiatives—wherein the institution underwrote the cost of materials to create new works, engaged young apprentices to assist the artist, and showcased the resulting works in an exhibition. With assistance from an engineer at the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), Lloyd deployed electronic technology as an art medium.
Alongside his artistic career, Lloyd was a dedicated teacher and a fierce advocate for community involvement in the arts. Lloyd held teaching positions at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, and Cooper Union in New York City; served as Art Consultant for the Mental Health Services at the Lincoln Hospital in Bronx, New York; and developed art workshops for youth and adults throughout New York City. He was heavily involved in the Art Workers’ Coalition, which formed in 1969 to pressure the city’s museums to present more exhibitions of work by people of color and women and to improve artists’ rights. In 1971 Lloyd reclaimed an abandoned warehouse in South Jamaica, Queens, New York, and established the Store Front Museum/Paul Robeson Theatre—Queens’s first art museum. For sixteen years, the Store Front Museum presented performances and exhibitions centered around Black art and culture and offered dance, karate, and exercise classes; annual festivals; and numerous other community programs. Lloyd’s activism in Queens continued up until his death.
Lloyd attended the Pratt Institute (1949–1952) and Brooklyn Museum Art School (1961). His electronically programmed light works are held in the collections of the Studio Museum in Harlem, Richard and Carole Cocks Art Museum at Miami University, Grey Art Museum at New York University, the Museum of Modern Art, the Weatherspoon Art Museum at UNC Greensboro, and several private collections.
