“People, I think, interact with the museum similarly with all other public spaces in the neighborhood,” says Tschabalala Self, the figurative artist whose works have been collected by the Studio as well as the Hammer Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago. Harlem born and raised, Self is another alum of the Studio’s artist-in-residence program. An exhibition in the new space will feature work by past participants in the program.
The Studio’s rented loft opened in a moment of political, cultural, and artistic reckoning in America. The parallels today are almost to the point of cliché. A reshaping of national arts institutions by the Trump administration is under way. There’s talk of “Black fatigue” in the art world after a perceived excess of successes for Black artists in recent years. On the latter point, particularly, the Studio’s return this fall could not arrive soon enough. “When the museum comes back and it takes its place within the arts universe, that voice of authority that can speak to these issues and put on exhibitions and have programming—it’s filling now the need for something like that,” Self says.
“It can be discouraging for young Black creatives to hear Black art spoken about in such harsh ways, ways that don’t reflect what Black art should be: a means for Black individuals to express their worldview, their existential concern, their desires for themselves, their own personal narratives; to share these things without shame and guilt and fear,” Self says. It was her own “confidence rearing” at the Studio in her earliest years that led to her pursuing art in full: “It went from being intellectual belief to a really deep-seated understanding that it was possible for me.”
Karon Davis, the artist and cofounder of Los Angeles’s Underground Museum, calls Golden a “lighthouse.” “We see her in California, we see her in openings,” Davis says. “I call it ‘spreading the gospel.’ ” Davis, a recently returned New Yorker, often passes the Studio Museum site between errands or visits to the National Black Theatre, whose chief executive officer, Sade Lythcott, she’s spotted in conversation with Golden on the street. “These are some powerful-ass women right outside on my stoop sharing wine, talking, supporting each other,” says Davis. Growing up in the city, for Davis the Studio itself was just as ever present. “Black people in New York City, it was our only space,” she says.
The Studio’s reopening comes as other institutions of the neighborhood celebrate milestone anniversaries—Golden rattles off her neighbors: the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, which celebrates its centennial; the Apollo Theater, now in its 91st year; Harlem School for the Arts, founded just before the Studio in the early 1960s; Harlem Stage; National Jazz Museum. “I can keep going,” Golden says. “This is a rich, rich, rich constellation of cultural institutions devoted to Black arts, culture, and letters. So our responsibility is born of what it is to be in the privilege of that richness.”
“I’m calling it the jewel box of Harlem,” Davis says of the new building. Even details of the handrails and the elevator inspire a bit of awe in her. “The gold, the little gold lines going up the handrails, it’s so royal,” she says. “It’s just so regal. We’re kings and queens, right? Just the way the light comes in through the skylights. It is such a gorgeous gift to the village of Harlem.”
The reopening will present a full-circle moment of sorts with another inaugural exhibition, a comprehensive presentation on the work of artist, activist, and educator Tom Lloyd. His “Electronic Refractions II” show christened the Studio in 1968, presenting abstract light sculptures that flashed in programmed kaleidoscopic patterns. There has not been another solo museum presentation of his work since.
“Being able to open with Lloyd is both a way to honor the institution’s history, to honor our founders’ prescience, but also to honor an artist whose work reverberates through these moments,” says Golden. “This museum is needed and necessary in this moment and in the ones that will come in the future. And I know that’s what our founders thought. We were built for this moment, and I mean that literally.”
