The Studio Museum in Harlem today announced initial details

HARLEM, NEW YORK, NY, OCTOBER 8, 2024 – The Studio Museum in Harlem today announced initial details about the artworks that will fill its galleries in the fall of 2025 when it celebrates the grand opening of its new home. The first facility conceived and designed especially for the institution since its founding fifty-six years ago, the new building will provide extensive exhibition, education, and program spaces and public amenities never before enjoyed by the Museum, greatly supporting the Studio Museum’s commitment to artists, audiences, and the Harlem community.

Honoring its history and ushering in a new era, the Studio Museum will inaugurate the building with a comprehensive presentation of the work of Tom Lloyd (1929–1996), the artist, educator, and activist whose pioneering practice was the subject of the institution’s opening exhibition in 1968. An installation drawn from the permanent collection will feature works made as early as the 1800s, as well as those by a host of today’s most renowned artists. This survey showcases more than two hundred years of creative achievements across mediums and underscores the Studio Museum’s role as a steward of art by artists of African descent. Returning to the building’s public spaces are artworks by Houston E. Conwill, David Hammons, and Glenn Ligon.

Raymond J. McGuire, Chairman of the Board of Trustees at the Studio Museum in Harlem, said, “With great pride and profound gratitude, we are now able to share the first details of what our community, our city, and the world will experience when we open our new home in 2025. I offer heartfelt thanks to the Board, our many generous individual donors, the numerous foundations that enable the Museum’s work, and our indispensable supporters in the public sphere, with leadership support from the City of New York and assistance from the State of New York.”

Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, said, “The Studio Museum in Harlem will move forward decisively while honoring our past with these revelatory exhibitions. Through the life and career of Tom Lloyd, whose solo exhibition inaugurated our Museum in 1968, we reencounter an artist who was years ahead of his time in both his ideals and artistic practice. Now, thanks to other artists, scholars, and our Curator, Connie H. Choi, his work is coming to light. This exhibition is joined by a breadth of remarkable works from our collection which will be presented in our other incredible galleries. Taken in its entirety, our collection traces, as few institutions can, a history of creativity by artists of African descent that we will continue to nurture far into the future.”