HARLEM, NY.- The Studio Museum in Harlem is presenting From Now: A Collection in Context, a shifting thematic installation drawn from the Museum's permanent collection and installed throughout the first-floor project space and second- and fourth-floor gallery and project spaces. Featuring regular rotations of works, the exhibition is organized in sections that will unfold and evolve over the course of the year. Altogether, the installation presents a plurality of voices and explores motifs that have preoccupied artists of African descent across generations.
From Now’s opening installation features nearly two hundred artworks that span the nineteenth century to the present, demonstrating the myriad ways artworks from disparate times, locations, and genres—and the artists who make them—can be in dialogue. Works that have rarely, if ever, been on view are displayed with those both newly acquired and long synonymous with the institution. By the exhibition’s close, over three hundred artworks from the Museum’s collection will have been on view. The exhibition follows in the lineage of past Studio Museum collection shows committed to revealing the many perspectives, identities, and forms of art making by Black artists.
Thelma Golden, Ford Foundation Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, said, “The Studio Museum’s permanent collection reflects our commitment preserving and celebrating the work of artists of African descent. Today, our collection holds over two centuries of artistic achievements by artists of African descent, revealing the extraordinary breadth of innovation and vision of Black artistic practice across time. From Now brings many of these works into dialogue and illuminates histories that have too often been overlooked.”
Connie H. Choi, Curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem, said, “From Now's rotational display invites visitors to see the Studio Museum’s collection as dynamic and evolving. By shifting the installation over time, we are able to uncover relationships between artists, practices, and historical moments, revealing connections that might otherwise go unnoticed. This method highlights the richness of artistic production by artists of African descent, and invites audiences to engage deeply with the collection.”
Although the Studio Museum was initially founded in 1968 as a noncollecting institution, its community of artists quickly recognized the need for the Museum to collect, steward, and preserve the work of Black artists. The Museum’s permanent collection now comprises nearly nine thousand objects made by over eight hundred artists working across all media, attesting to the vitality of Black culture and the significance of the Museum’s mission. From Now is a tribute to these early monumental efforts to establish and build a collection.
Artists in the initial display of From Now include Emma Amos, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Romare Bearden, Dawoud Bey, Sanford Biggers, Kwame Brathwaite, Jordan Casteel, Elizabeth Catlett, Dana C. Chandler Jr., Barbara Chase-Riboud, Karon Davis, Roy DeCarava, Beauford Delaney, Leonardo Drew, Melvin Edwards, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Nikita Gale, Sam Gilliam, Lauren Halsey, Allison Janae Hamilton, David Hammons, Lyle Ashton Harris, Maren Hassinger, Barkley L. Hendricks, Juliana Huxtable, Jennie C. Jones, Isaac Julien, Titus Kaphar, Seydou Keïta, Jacob Lawrence, Deana Lawson, Simone Leigh, Ralph Lemon, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, Senga Nengudi, Kori Newkirk, Chris Ofili, Lorraine O’Grady, Jennifer Packer, Gordon Parks, Rosana Paulino, Elle Pérez, Pope.L, Faith Ringgold, Deborah Roberts, Alison Saar, Betye Saar, Raymond Saunders, Malick Sidibé, Lorna Simpson, Ming Smith, Martine Syms, Henry Taylor, Texas Isaiah, Alma Thomas, Hank Willis Thomas, James Van Der Zee, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, Deborah Willis, William T. Williams, Fred Wilson, Stanley Whitney, Jack Whitten, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, and many more.
A new collection handbook augments the installation—Meaning Matter Memory: Selections from the Studio Museum in Harlem Collection, which highlights works by more than two hundred and sixty artists, including Derrick Adams, Nick Cave, Samuel Fosso, Theaster Gates, Cy Gavin, Arthur Jafa, Julie Mehretu, Martin Puryear, Augusta Savage, and Tschabalala Self, among many more. Published by Phaidon and designed by WeShouldDoItAll, the handbook—the first on the Museum’s collection in fifteen years—also features new texts by more than one hundred contributors and illuminates the impact the Studio Museum’s collection has made on art history and the broader cultural landscape.
From Now: A Collection in Context is organized by Curator Connie H. Choi, Associate Curator Yelena Keller, Assistant Curators Adria Gunter and Jayson Overby Jr., Curatorial Assistant Kiki Teshome, and former Senior Curatorial Assistant Habiba Hopson, with Curatorial Assistant Simon Ghebreyesus; Studio Museum in Harlem and MoMA Curatorial Fellows Maya Davis, Abigail Gordon, Cam McEwen, and Taylor Ndiaye; and Robert Rauschenberg Curatorial Fellow Maria Wilson.
