HARLEM, NY.- The Studio Museum in Harlem comes alive this spring with the installation of seven new exhibitions and artists’ projects. Traveling to the Studio Museum from the MCA Chicago, David Hartt: Stray Light offers an intimate look inside the Johnson Publishing Company’s iconic former headquarters. Fred Wilson: Local Color, Assembly Required: Selections from the Permanent Collection, and Brothers and Sisters all feature highlights from the Studio Museum’s collection, including recently acquired classics, rarely seen masterworks and brand-new innovations. Ayé A. Aton: Space-Time Continuum and Mendi + Keith Obadike: American Cypher present focused looks at recent projects, while Harlem Postcards Spring 2013 continues the Museum’s signature project to bring fresh perspectives to the Harlem landscape. On view March 28 to June 30, 2013, these diverse presentations exemplify the Museum’s commitment to promoting and celebrating the wide range of artistic contributions of artists of African descent and work inspired and influenced by black culture.
David Hartt: Stray Light
David Hartt: Stray Light presents color photographs, sculptures and a video installation by Chicago-based conceptual photographer David Hartt (b. 1967). Stray Light reflects on the iconic headquarters of the Johnson Publishing Company in Chicago, an eleven-story Modernist building on South Michigan Avenue. Home to Jet and Ebony magazines from 1971 to 2011, the building was heralded as the first major downtown Chicago building designed by an African-American architect since the eighteenth century. Hartt looks to the intersection of the publisher’s ideals and values, the style and aesthetics embodied by the site and the lasting cultural impact of Johnson Publishing.
Fred Wilson: Local Color
The Studio Museum presents conceptual artist Fred Wilson’s (b. 1954) installation Local Color for the first time since its debut in 1993. Originally created for the Studio Museum exhibition Artists Respond: The “New World” Question, Local Color incorporates both traditional African and Caribbean artifacts from the Studio Museum’s collection and an assortment of objects the artist purchased along Harlem’s 125th Street. Known for his installations and projects in museums and cultural institutions throughout the world and interested in the intersections between art and popular culture, Wilson asks viewers to consider what museums choose to collect and which histories are preserved.
Ayé A. Aton: Space-Time Continuum
Artist and avant-garde jazz musician Ayé A. Aton (b. 1940) moved to Chicago in the early 1960s. In the late 60s and early 70s, Aton painted murals in homes in both Chicago and his home state of Kentucky. A disciple of and frequent collaborator with composer, poet and Afrofuturist pioneer, Sun Ra (1914-1993), Aton created murals combining references to and imagery from ancient Egypt, Christianity and outer space. This collection of over 200 slides documents Aton’s murals through image and sound, providing an intimate glimpse into the domestic lives of an African-American community on the cusp of cultural transformation. This project marks Aton’s first solo museum presentation.
Mendi + Keith Obadike: American Cypher
The Studio Museum presents a site-specific iteration of American Cypher, a suite of projects that respond to American stories about race and DNA by the intermedia artists Mendi and Keith Obadike (both b. 1973).
Assembly Required: Selections from the Permanent Collection
Assembly Required presents photographs, drawings, sculptures and paintings from the Studio Museum’s permanent collection that explore the ways in which certain works are dependent on site, and the viewer’s conceptual and perceptual experience of that locale through the artist’s intervention. Taking Sam Gilliam (b. 1933)’s landmark painting Lion’s Rock Arc (1981) as inspiration, the exhibition includes a number of works comprised of multiple parts, such as the recent acquisition Anthology (William Pope.L) (2011) by 2005–06 Artist-in-Residence Clifford Owens (b. 1971). This exhibition explores not only the importance of location and configuration, but also the limits of artistic intention when a work is displayed.
Brothers and Sisters
Brothers and Sisters is a cross-generational exhibition that examines the relationships between a selection of Beauford Delaney’s (1901–1979) paintings and prints made between 1958 and 1969, and works in The Studio Museum in Harlem’s permanent collection. The works in this exhibition will be displayed in small groupings—”families” sharing formal and stylistic characteristics—with an emphasis on the continuation and expansion of painterly abstraction. The exhibition includes work from some of Delaney’s contemporaries, such as Herbert Gentry (1919–2003), Jack Whitten (b. 1939) and Alma Thomas (1891–1978), as well as contemporary artists Kori Newkirk (b. 1970), Rashawn Griffin (b. 1980) and Julie Mehretu (b. 1970), among others.
Harlem Postcards Spring 2013:
Alex Da Corte, Ugo Rondinone, Jumoke Sanwo, Letha Wilson
Harlem Postcards is an ongoing project that invites contemporary artists of diverse backgrounds to reflect on Harlem as a site of cultural activity, political vitality, visual stimuli, artistic contemplation and creative production. Representing intimate and dynamic perspectives on Harlem, the images reflect the idiosyncratic visions of contemporary artists from a wide range of backgrounds and locations. Each photograph has been reproduced as a limited edition postcard available free to visitors. This season, we are pleased to feature postcard images by Alex Da Corte (b. 1980), Ugo Rondinone (b. 1964), Jumoke Sanwo (b. 1977) and Letha Wilson (b. 1976).
