HARLEM, NY.- The Studio Museum in Harlem today announced the fall exhibitions that will close its inaugural year of programming, all of which builds upon the Museum’s ongoing commitment to showcasing a vast selection of works from its celebrated permanent collection, which today represents more than eight hundred artists. This objective, made possible because of the institution’s new 82,000-square-foot home that provides state-of-the-art galleries, commenced last November with From Now: A Collection in Context, a dynamic presentation of over three-hundred collection works. From Now was augmented by the publication Meaning Matter Memory: Selections from the Studio Museum in Harlem Collection, which highlights works by more than 260 artists.

For the fall season, the Museum maintains its commitment to displaying its collection with Dreams of This Future: The Collection of Peggy Cooper Cafritz, an ambitious exhibition of works bequeathed to the Museum by the legendary arts patron, educator, and civil rights activist Peggy Cooper Cafritz. In 2018 Cafritz gifted more than four hundred objects from her unparalleled personal collection to the Studio Museum, bolstering the Museum’s collection to what it is today. Opening in September, Geometries will feature a selection of works that center geometry as a point of artistic inquiry. The institution’s annual Artist-in-Residence exhibition returns to the Museum’s building for the first time in eight years, having been presented off-site at MoMA PS1 while the Studio Museum’s new home was under construction. Opening in October, A sustained becoming: Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2026 extends the institution’s legacy of supporting early-career artists and includes new works by Derriann Pharr, Simonette Quamina, and Taylor Simmons. The 2026 cohort is the first to create work out of the institution’s new J. Bruce Llewellyn Artist in Residence Center, a dedicated space for the Museum’s signature Artist-in-Residence program, which, since its founding, has championed the work of over 150 artists of African and Afro-Latinx descent, including some of the most celebrated artists working today.

Additional details on the Museum’s upcoming exhibitions and public programs will be announced in the coming months.





Thelma Golden, Ford Foundation Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, said, “In our first year of reopening, we wanted to make certain that our visitors could enjoy the many remarkable works in our collection. I am therefore delighted to share that by this year’s end nearly five hundred works from our collection will have been on view. We also wanted to recognize those who have entrusted us to steward their legacies by making our collection’s growth possible. Dreams of This Future celebrates the incomparable late Peggy Cooper Cafritz, who had a vision for a world abounding with Black art. In 2018 we were honored to be gifted hundreds of works from Cafritz by emerging and established artists of African descent alike. In Geometries, we look to the artists whose deft understanding of shape and form has resulted in imaginative forms of creative expression. We are also delighted to welcome our annual culminating Artist-in-Residence exhibition back into the Museum with new works by Derriann Pharr, Simonette Quamina, and Taylor Simmons.”

Upcoming Exhibitions and Presentations

Dreams of This Future: The Collection of Peggy Cooper Cafritz
August 19, 2026–February 28, 2027

This exhibition brings together a selection of works from an historic 2018 gift to the Studio Museum in Harlem by Peggy Cooper Cafritz (1947–2018) to celebrate her legacy as an advocate for the arts and her lifelong commitment to artists and their practices. An arts patron, educator, and civil rights activist, Cafritz bequeathed the majority of her art collection to the Studio Museum and the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, a public school in Washington, DC, which she cofounded in 1974.

The gift to the Studio Museum encompasses a multigenerational range of artists of African descent and features many alumni of the Museum’s signature Artist-in-Residence program or those who have had work exhibited at the Museum—demonstrating the shared commitment of Cafritz and the Museum to supporting Black artists throughout their careers. Artists in the exhibition include: Nina Chanel Abney, John Bankston, Sanford Biggers, Diedrick Brackens, Nick Cave, Elizabeth Colomba, Noah Davis, Emory Douglas, Derek Fordjour, Hassan Hajjaj, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Titus Kaphar, Deana Lawson, Simone Leigh, Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, Jackie Nickerson, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Kambui Olujimi, Jennifer Packer, Deborah Roberts, Tschabalala Self, Devin Troy Strother, William Villalongo, and Saya Woolfalk.

Dreams of This Future is organized by Connie H. Choi, Curator, and Kiki Teshome, Curatorial Assistant. The Studio Museum is grateful to the Cafritz family for their support of this exhibition.

Geometries
September 10, 2026–January 31, 2027

Whether conjuring figures from elemental building blocks or destabilizing perception with abstract compositions, the artists in this exhibition make use of geometry as an organizational logic for the images they create. They translate the breadth of the study—grid-like city maps, West African textiles, patterned flowerheads, and sonic vibrations—into a shared visual vocabulary. Through that common language, artists impart meaning onto material, opening new interpretive avenues for viewers in turn. Artists in the exhibition include: Julie Mehretu, Alma Thomas, Jack Whitten, and William T. Williams, among many others.

Geometries is organized by Thelma Golden, Ford Foundation Director and Chief Curator, and Simon Ghebreyesus, Curatorial Assistant.

A sustained becoming: Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2026
October 1, 2026–January 3, 2027

A sustained becoming: Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2026 showcases the work of the Studio Museum in Harlem’s 2026 artists in residence, Derriann Pharr, Simonette Quamina, and Taylor Simmons, the first Artist-in-Residence cohort in the Museum’s new building. Each artist’s practice demonstrates a distinct approach to figuration, with Pharr, Quamina, and Simmons working across painting, collage, printmaking, drawing, sculpture, and mixed media. Real and otherworldly images coalesce to reveal familiar and new narratives, gesturing to the experience of remembering or dreaming. Grounded in cultural memory, the works in this exhibition create momentary suspensions in time to imagine what has already transpired and what is yet to come.

A sustained becoming: Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2026 is organized by Adria Gunter, Assistant Curator. Exhibition support provided by Cam McEwen, Studio Museum/MoMA Curatorial Fellow.