NEW YORK,NY–The Studio Museum in Harlem, the nexus for art by artists of African descent nationally and internationally, opened its new home to the public on Saturday, November 15, with a celebratory Community Day. Designed by Adjaye Associates with Cooper Robertson as executive architect, the seven-floor, 82,000-square-foot building is the first home in the Studio Museum’s fifty-seven-year history created expressly for the institution’s mission and program. Made possible by a holistic campaign that to date has raised more than $300 million, the new building enables the Studio Museum to elevate its service to a growing and diverse audience, provide enhanced educational opportunities for people of all ages, expand its program of world-renowned exhibitions, and strengthen its trailblazing Artist-in-Residence program.
Visiting the Studio Museum in Harlem
The Studio Museum in Harlem is located at 144 West 125th Street, between Malcolm X Boulevard (Lenox Avenue) and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard (Seventh Avenue). The Studio Museum will be open Wednesday through Sunday, from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm, with extended hours on Friday and Saturday, from 11:00 am to 9:00 pm. The Museum is open to Members on Saturday mornings, from 10:00 to 11:00 am, before the galleries open to the public. Admission rates are offered as a suggestion, with Sundays free for everyone. Suggested rates are $16 for adults and $9 for seniors (sixty-five years and over), students, and visitors with disabilities (care partners are free). Admission is free for children sixteen and under. Tickets to the Studio Museum may be purchased online at studiomuseum.org/visit or at the Museum.
The new Studio Museum in Harlem will open with:
•A major presentation of the work of Tom Lloyd, the innovative artist whose practice was the subject of the Studio Museum’s inaugural exhibition in 1968.Based on extensive new scholarship and intensive conservation work, Tom Lloyd will explore the artist’s contributions to the interplay of art and technology, and will be accompanied by the first publication dedicated to the artist.
•The first installment of From Now: A Collection in Context, a rotating installation of works from the Museum’s distinguished permanent collection, which today holds nearly nine thousand artworks. Works will span from the1800s to the present—highlighting more than two hundred years of artistic achievements by artists of African descent—and will range from those newly acquired to those that have been recently conserved or not shown for decades.
•A presentation of new works on paper by more than one hundred alumni of the Artist-in-Residence program. From the Studio: Fifty-Eight Years of Artists in Residence will place intergenerational artists in conversation with each other while paying tribute to this foundational program of the Museum, which has nurtured artists of African descent for more than half a century.
•To Be a Place, a presentation of archival photographs and ephemera of the institution’s history, offering visitors an opportunity to discover the host of exhibitions, events, and programs that defined the Studio Museum throughout nearly sixty years of cultural and political change.
During the inaugural year, newly commissioned site-specific artworks will include:
•Untitled (heliotrope)(2025), a sonic sculptural installation by Camille Norment composed of brass tubing and featuring a chorus of voices, offering a sensory experience for visitors as they traverse the Museum’s terrace staircase.
•Harlem Is a Myth, a wall-mounted, metal-based installation by Christopher Myers in the Museum’s new Education Workshop that envisions an intergenerational community of hybrid figures gathered in a fantastical landscape. Artworks that have become synonymous with the Studio Museum and that have been reinstalled are:
•David Hammons’s red, black, and green Untitled flag (2004), which is inspired by the Pan-African flag, designed by Marcus Garvey in the 1920s for the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League.
•Glenn Ligon’s Give Us a Poem(2007), a wall sculpture that translates an improvised poem by Muhammad Ali into flashing neon.
•Houston E. Conwill’s seven bronze time capsules, The Joyful Mysteries(1984),containing confidential written testaments by seven distinguished Black Americans, which will be opened in September 2034, fifty years after their creation.
