Join us for a special screening of ¡Pa'lante, Siempre Pa'lante! (1996, 48 mins) in the second installment of our Studio Screen partnership with Maysles Cinema. In the midst of the African American liberation struggle, protests to end the Vietnam War and the women's movement for equality, the Young Lords Party emerged, raising a militant voice for the empowerment of Puerto Ricans and other Latino/as in the United States. Through intimate conversations with former members and archival footage, the documentary surveys Puerto Rican history as well as the Young Lords's political vision and legacy. The screening will be followed by a talkback session with the film's director, Iris Morales, highlighting her experience as one of the first female members of the Young Lords as well as her work capturing the organization's history in film and the recently published Through the Eyes of Rebel Women.

Drawing thematic inspiration from two of the Museum's current exhibitions, Circa 1970 and The Window and the Breaking of the Window, this nonfiction film series addresses the on- and off-screen legacies of socially engaged cultural movements of the 1970s. Presented in partnership with Maysles Cinema, the selected films highlight the methods and leaders people turn to when everyday injustices move them to protest. Each screening will be followed by a talkback session featuring local community organizers, and serve as a space for intergenerational reflection on contemporary protest practices and the ways history is ever-present.

Admission is a $10 suggested donation. All proceeds from the screening will support the Cinema at Maysles Documentary Center, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the exhibition and production of documentary films that inspire dialogue and action.

Studio Squared is the Museum's series of informal art-making workshops aimed at making a wide range of studio practices accessible to adult audiences. Each workshop focuses on a particular theme and creative process inspired by our exhibitions and explores methods of creative production through an experiential approach.

Inspired by the printmaking practices exhibited in Circa 1970, this Studio Squared invites visitors to experiment with pronto plate lithography, an immediate and effective method for producing hand-printed work. Presented in partnership with the EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop (RBPMW), a team of skilled teaching artists will demonstrate the essential components of pronto plate lithography and guide participants through the production of their own 6" x 9" prints!

EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop (RBPMW) is a co-operative printmaking workspace that provides professional-quality printmaking facilities to artists and printmakers of every skill level. Continuing Robert Blackburn's vision of a welcoming and open creative environment, RBPMW is committed to fostering a diverse artistic community working in an environment that embraces technical and aesthetic exploration, innovation and collaboration.

Participants are invited to register for one of two sessions using the links below.

Session 1- 5:00 to 6:45 pm
Session 2- 7:15 to 9:00 pm

Join us for a special screening of Yuri Kochiyama: Passion for Justice (1994, 57 min.), the first installment of our collaborative Studio Screen series with Maysles Cinema! Through extensive interviews with family and friends, archival footage, music and photographs, the documentary chronicles the Harlem native's contributions to social change and participation in some of the most significant events of the 20th century. The screening will be followed by a talkback session with representatives of From Harlem with Love: A Mural for Yuri and Malcolm—a group of artists and community activists inspired by the legacies of and deep friendship between Yuri Kochiyama and Malcolm X.

Drawing thematic inspiration from two of the Museum's current exhibitions, Circa 1970 and The Window and the Breaking of the Window, this nonfiction film series addresses the on- and off-screen legacies of socially engaged cultural movements of the 1970s. Presented in partnership with Maysles Cinema, the selected films highlight the methods and leaders people turn to when everyday injustices move them to protest. Each screening will be followed by a talkback session featuring local community organizers, and serve as a space for intergenerational reflection on contemporary protest practices and the ways history is ever-present.

Admission is a $10 suggested donation. All proceeds from the screening will support the Cinema at Maysles Documentary Center, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the exhibition and production of documentary films that inspire dialogue and action.

Get a behind-the-scenes look at the Museum's signature program, meet 2016–17 artists in residence Autumn Knight, Julia Phillips and Andy Robert and see their works in progress. The studios are located on the 3rd floor of the Studio Museum and all three artists will be present. Artists-in-Residence Open Studios is free and open to all.

Autumn Knight (b. 1980, Houston, Texas) is an interdisciplinary artist working within performance, installation and text. Her work frequently addresses conventions of racial and gender identity, psychotherapy, and access to the arts. Knight’s work has been in exhibitions at institutions including DiverseWorks Artspace, Houston; Project Row Houses, Houston; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; New Museum, New York; and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Knight has been in residence with In-Situ, Pendle, England; Galveston Artist Residency, Texas; YICA, Yamaguchi, Japan; and Artpace, San Antonio, Texas. She attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and was a 2015 Artadia awardee. Knight received a BA from Dillard University and an MA in Drama Therapy from New York University. In 2013, Knight performed Steffani Jemison’s You Completes Me (2013) at the Studio Museum in conjunction with the exhibition Fore.

Julia Phillips (b. 1985, Hamburg, Germany) is an interdisciplinary artist interested in the relationships between feminist, post-colonial, and psycho-analytical thought using the body as a primary ground. Her most recent work is a series of ceramic objects, or “tools,” the artist invents and invites viewers to imagine a function for. Phillips recently completed the 2016 Whitney Museum Independent Study Studio Program. She received her MFA from Columbia University in 2015 and her BFA from the Academy of Fine Arts Hamburg (HFBK). Her work has been shown internationally in Hamburg, Berlin, London, Vienna, Warsaw, Los Angeles and New York and was included in A Constellation (2015–16) at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Phillips is a 2016 resident at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

Andy Robert’s (b. 1984, Les Cayes, Haiti) practice exists at the intersection of sculpture, collage, assemblage, performance and installation. Often manipulating and collaging found objects or photographs, Robert seeks to capture the ephemeral, fragmented nature of existence and communication in the twenty-first century. Robert received a BFA in Painting from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2008 and an MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2011. He attended the 2015 Whitney Independent Study Studio Program and is a 2016 resident at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Most recently, Robert has exhibited at the Bienal de las Fronteras at the Instituto Tamaulipeco para la Cultura y las Artes, Tamaulipas, Mexico, and Dimensions Variable, Miami. His work was included in A Constellation (2015–16) at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Robert was a 2013 recipient of a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant.

The Artist-in-Residence program is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council for the Arts, a state agency; the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation; the Jerome Foundation; Kiki Smith; and by endowments established by the Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Trust and the Andrea Frank Fund.

On the occasion of Alma Thomas and Richard Hunt: Framed and Extended, this conversation invites renowned contemporary artists Richard Hunt and Sam Gilliam to reflect on abstract art and celebrate their pioneering contributions to the field.  Using these two seminal exhibitions as points of entry, the conversation will explore the evolution of each artist's distinct practice, illuminating the diverse ways in which Hunt, Gilliam and Thomas approach form and color.  Moderated by  Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture at Brown University Dr. Courtney J. Martin, the panel will also explore overlaps in the artists' lives and careers—including the March on Washington in August 1963—recounting milestone moments in the cannon of art history, and explore Thomas's legacy through the artists' personal accounts. A Q&A segment will follow the conversation. At the close of the program, Richard Hunt will lead a walkthrough of Richard Hunt: Framed and Extended.

Tickets to this program are $10, which includes Museum admission, which is a suggested donation of $7 for adults and $3 for students and seniors.To pre-register for this event, please click here. All seating will be on a first-come, first-served basis.

Studio Salon is the Museum's literary society that invites language lovers to participate in an ongoing series of artist talks, book launches and writing workshops inspired by our exhibitions. This special edition of Studio Salonis presented on the occasion of Alma Thomas, an exhibition that examines the evolution of an artist who created a highly personal style that expanded upon traditional Abstract Expressionist and Washington Color School practices through experimentations with abstraction, color, line and pattern.

Alma Thomas is accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue by exhibition curators Ian Berry, Dayton Director of the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, and Lauren Haynes, Associate Curator, Permanent Collection at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Filled with vibrant illustrations, this stunning volume traces Thomas's development as an artist and includes specially commissioned responses by leading artists Leslie Hewitt, Jennie C. Jones, Leslie Wayne andSaya Woolfalk. Join us as Saya Woolfalk and Leslie Wayne reflect on specific works on view in our main galleries!

This multi-part program will feature an exhibition walkthrough led by the Museum's curatorial department, followed by twenty-minute artist talks in the galleries and a public dialogue in the Museum's Theatre moderated by Berry. Guests are invited to purchase copies of the catalogue on-site during the book signing that will conclude our evening.

This program is free with Museum admission, which is a suggested donation of $7 for adults and $3 for students and seniors. To pre-register for this event, please click here. All seating will be on a first-come, first-served basis.

On the occasion of Tenses: Artists in Residence 2015–16, join artist in residence Jordan Casteel; Rujeko Hockley, Assistant Curator at the Brooklyn Museum; and Dr. Monica Miller, Associate Professor of English and Africana Studies at Barnard College, as they explore the complexly layered site specificity of Harlem. Employing the backdrops to Casteel's dynamic paintings as a point of entry to discuss the changing cultural landscape of Harlem, the panel will also consider the impact of gentrification and the disappearance of cultural landmarks on our social consciousness. The conversation will also explore Harlem as projection and performance, entrepreneurship as it relates to mainstream notions of legitimacy, and the alternative economies that can emerge in a black-owned space.

Following the public dialogue will be a Q&A and walkthrough of the exhibition, where three of the men depicted in Casteel's paintings will discuss their own personal narratives in relation to the topics raised in the panel discussion.

This program is free with Museum admission, which is a suggested donation of $7 for adults and $3 for students and seniors. To purchase advance tickets, please click here. All seating will be on a first-come, first-served basis.

This new program series invites contemporary artists to respond to specific works on view in the galleries with a focus on form and process. Through guided observation, visitors hear from artists working across a diversity of media as they reflect on impactful works, and explore their own connections to—and interpretations of—the exhibiting artist's practice and methods.

This special gallery talk is presented on the occasion of Alma Thomas, an exhibition that examines the evolution of an artist who created a highly personal style that expanded upon traditional Abstract Expressionist and Washington Color School practices through experimentations with color, line and pattern.

Join us as Mike Cloud, Leslie Hewitt and Eric Mack discuss Thomas as a formalist, exploring works from every period in her dynamic career, including rarely exhibited sketches, watercolors and early abstractions, as well as her signature canvases.

This program will feature three, twenty-minute artist talks in the galleries, followed by a Q&A and public dialogue in the theatre. This program is free with Museum admission, which is a suggested donation of $7 for adults and $3 for students and seniors. To pre-register, please click here.

Presented on the occasion of Rashaad Newsome: THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO SEE, this artist talk will begin with an in-depth walk-through of the exhibition, followed by a public dialogue and talk-back in the theater. Newsome will be joined by Amanda Hunt, assistant curator, as they discuss the full trajectory of Newsome’s career over the past decade, focusing on his deeply engaged work with the Vogue community and contemporary performances of race, gender, diasporic identities, and pop culture at large.

This program is free with Museum admission, which is a suggested donation of $7 for adults and $3 for students and seniors. To pre-register for this event, please click here. All seating will be on a first-come, first-served basis.

Rashaad Newsome has worked for over a decade with members of the Vogue community, which developed in New York City’s queer ballroom scene of the 1970s. With a particular interest in critiquing the popular appropriation of Vogue in the early 1990s, and with the aim to bring these queer communities of color from the Vogue scene into the institutional space, Newsome creates work that reframes how performers are represented, and highlights their enormous talent for style and bodily movement. The title of the exhibition draws from an emcee’s refrain, while simultaneously pointing to the desire of wanting queer bodies of color represented within the institutional space. Featuring video and collage works made between 2008-2014, THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO SEE explores the beauty, agency and complexities of Vogue and performance art. 

On the occasion of Palatable: Food and Contemporary Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem is proud to partner with Art In FLUX Harlem for brunch and a panel discussion at Angel of Harlem, followed by a guided tour of the exhibition at the Studio Museum. Celebrating the myriad ways people represent themselves through food, this program engages food culture as a powerful lens through which people self-identify and understand themselves in relation to issues of politics, memory, heritage, race and culture.

The program begins at Angel of Harlem with brunch service and a panel discussion between exhibiting artist Miguel Luciano; Entrepreneur, DJ and founder of Seed Street Hannah Bronfman; entrepreneur Anahi Angelone; and The Cecil's Chef Joseph “JJ” Johnson. Following brunch, enjoy a guided tour of Palatable with Assistant Curator Hallie Ringle.

Tickets for the event include an entrée, coffee and mimosa, and access to the panel and guided tour. To purchase your ticket, please click here. Seating is limited, so be sure to grab your ticket today!

Studio Squared is a series of informal art-making workshops aimed at making a wide range of studio practices accessible to adult audiences. Each workshop focuses on a particular theme and creative process inspired by our exhibitions, and explores methods of creative production through an experiential approach.

Designed as a dynamic site for self-exploration, this Studio Squared features Focus artist Ariel Jackson, who will lead participants through her practice of processing trauma through the creation of fictional narratives. Employing personal photographs, paper, fabric and paint, the workshop invites participants to brainstorm traumas, small and large, as a primer for producing layered works that speak to the complexity of the human experience. In the safe space that the workshop creates, participants will be encouraged to share the experiences that have shaped who they are, how they identify and who they might want to become.

The program will begin in the Museum lobby with an artist-led tour of Jackson's video meditations, The Origin of the Blues (2015), What Are the Blues (2015) and Blues Note: Feelings 01 (2015), during which she will discuss her processes for sourcing imagery and language. The program will then move into the Theatre, where the workshop will take place.

Thanks to the generous support of Target, Museum admission and public programs are free and open to the public on Sundays. Please click here to pre-register.

Refreshments and supplies will be provided; however, please bring copies of family photos, newspaper/magazine clippings or any other 2-D materials you'd like to incorporate into your collage!

Ariel Jackson is a multi-media artist who works and lives in Brooklyn, NY. She grew up in New Orleans, LA and after experiencing Hurricane Katrina began using her body as a vessel to testify about sociopolitical traumas and situations. She develops characters to create testaments using allegorical abstract language aided by a collage of media and craft materials. Her most commonly used character is 'Confuserella' a Panfrikan who traveled through space to Plastica after the blues came in. On Plastica Confuserella graduated with a degree in finding the blues. Since then Jackson has been documenting her travels and memories. Jackson's work stems from a desire to create a safe space for testaments outside of the mainstream media and create alternate narratives for maneuvering and exploring sociopolitical traumas via group identity, memory, cultural propriety and individualism.

Jackson earned a BFA from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York 2013. She participated in the Bruce High Quality Foundation University's Summer Emerging Artist Residency Program in 2015, and is currently a Van Lier Fellow in the Visual Arts Program at Wave Hill. Jackson's work has been shown at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Bronx Museum, Susan Inglett Gallery in New York and Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.

Studio Salon is the Museum's literary society that explores the dynamic intersections of literature and contemporary art through artist talks, book launches and writing workshops inspired by our exhibitions. This edition of Studio Salon is presented on the occasion of Surface Area: Selections from the Permanent Collection, an exhibition which explores surface as an expanded space of interaction, where the history of an object or a body leaves its trace.

Please join Triple Canopy and The Studio Museum in Harlem to celebrate the publication of On Value, a multifarious book about the value of ephemeral artworks, and the labor and bodies that make them. Adam Pendleton—On Value contributor and exhibiting artist in Surface Area—will be joined by choreographer and artist Ralph Lemon, who co-edited On Value alongside Triple Canopy.  Lemon and Pendleton will discuss how they have each sought to transpose live events, whether dance performances or charged historical events, into publishable forms such as essays, visual artifacts, and print books. They will also examine the ways their respective starting points—Lemon in performance, and Pendleton in visual art—have influenced their distinctive approaches to interdisciplinary work, and how their work might disturb epistemological frameworks and challenge the treatment of historical inaccuracies. Triple Canopy associate editor Lizzie Feidelson will moderate.       

This program is free with Museum admission, which is a suggested donation of $7 for adults and $3 for students and seniors. To pre-register for this event, please click here. All seating will be on a first-come, first-served basis.

To learn more about On Value—which includes contributions by Kevin Beasley, Claire Bishop, Philip Bither, Paula Court, Adrienne Edwards, Tom Finkelpearl, Ana Janevski, Claudia La Rocco, Thomas J. Lax, Ralph Lemon, Glenn Ligon, Glenn Lowry, Sarah Michelson, Fred Moten, Adam Pendleton, Yvonne Rainer, Will Rawls, David Velasco, and Nari Ward—or to order a copy, please click here.

Adam Pendleton (b. 1984, Richmond, Virginia) is a conceptual artist known for his multi-disciplinary practice, which moves fluidly between painting, publishing, photographic collage, video and performance. His work centers on an engagement with language, in both the figurative and literal senses, and the re-contextualization of history through appropriated imagery to establish alternative interpretations of the present and, as the artist has explained, “a future dynamic where new historical narratives and meanings can exist.”

Ralph Lemon is a choreographer, director, writer, and installation artist who is artistic director of Cross Performance, Inc. He develops intellectually rigorous and experimental performances that are as socially and politically resonant as they are personal, including the multimedia collaboration How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? (2010); a commission for the Lyon Opera Ballet, Rescuing the Princess (2009); and the epic cycle, The Geography Trilogy (1997-2004).

Triple Canopy is a magazine based in New York. Since 2007, Triple Canopy has advanced a model for publication that encompasses digital works of art and literature, public conversations, exhibitions, and books. This model hinges on the development of publishing systems that incorporate networked forms of production and circulation. Working closely with artists, writers, technologists, and designers, Triple Canopy produces projects that demand considered reading and viewing. Triple Canopy resists the atomization of culture and, through sustained inquiry and creative research, strives to enrich the public sphere. Triple Canopy is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization and a member of Common Practice New York.

Visit the working studios of the 2015–16 artists in residence—Jordan Casteel, EJ Hill and Jibade-Khalil Huffman—on Sunday, April 17, 2016 from 1–4pm. The studios are located on the 3rd floor of the Studio Museum and all three artists will be present.

Since our founding in 1968, the Museum has offered an intensive, annual studio residency that supports emerging visual artists working in any media, with over one hundred graduates having gone on to highly regarded careers. Open Studios is a unique opportunity for visitors to directly engage with the Museum’s resident artists at the beginning and midpoint of their tenure. In the Fall and Spring, the artists open their studios to the public and are encouraged to discuss works in progress, sharing valuable insight into their inspirations, processes and techniques. At the culmination of their residency, an exhibition of their work is presented in the Museum’s galleries, in addition to a public program where they are invited to explore various aspects of their practice with a critical dialogue partner. 

About the artists:

Jordan Casteel (b. 1989, Denver, CO) is a figurative painter whose recent work uses bold color and thick, gestural paint to explore the theme of black masculinity in a domestic environment. She received her BA in Studio Art from Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA (2011), and her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University in New Haven, CT (2014). She has been an artist in residence at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY (2015) and at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Process Space on Governors Island, NY (2015). Her work was selected for inclusion in New American Paintings Northeast Issue #116 in 2015.

EJ Hill (b. 1985, Los Angeles, CA) practices endurance-based performance in which he uses his body as the literal and symbolic site for examining the many ways in which physical and ideological bodies may transcend their afflictions. His work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Buenos Aires and Berlin. He received a BFA from Columbia College in Chicago (2011) and an MFA from the University of California at Los Angeles (2013).

Jibade-Khalil Huffman (b. 1981, Detroit, MI) is the author of three books of poems: 19 Names For Our Band (2008), James Brown Is Dead (2011) and Sleeper Hold (2015). His projects fuse the visual arts and writing, combing poetic/essayistic texts with video installation, photography and performance, and have been presented at P.S.1/MoMA in New York, the Hammer in Los Angeles, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and Southern Exposure in San Francisco, among others. He received a BA in Photography from Bard College (2003), an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University (2005) and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Southern California (2013).