A group of artists and activists rented a loft above an Uptown Manhattan liquor store in 1968 with the goal of turning it into a nexus for Black culture. They called it the Studio Museum in Harlem.
They eventually moved out of the loft, and the Studio Museum has since become an internationally acclaimed hub for Black artists. But the museum closed its doors in 2018 in what eventually became a seven-year wait as it set out to build a new home. This weekend, it’s finally cutting the ribbon on a brand new building located just blocks from the original loft.
The Studio Museum’s director, Thelma Golden, is thrilled.
“In many ways I do feel the timing of our opening now is ideal,” she said. “We’re opening in a moment that’s very much like the moment when the museum was founded.”
The museum’s new home offers a custom-built canvas to showcase rotating works from its resident artists and its 9,000-piece permanent collection.
“It was always this museum’s goal to be a home for Black art. And the collection really represents a cross-generational, amazing conversation between artists who made works over 100 years ago, and artists who are making work right now,” said Golden.
The museum’s inaugural exhibition includes work by light artist Tom Lloyd., whose works hang like stained glass in a chapel-like-room with a high, barrel-vaulted ceiling. It’s fitting that Lloyd, who passed away in 1996, will have a solo show at the reopening, as his “Electronic Refractions II” was the museum’s very first solo show.
“Lloyd was thinking specifically about how to reflect his immediate community, a predominantly Black community in Jamaica, Queens,” explained exhibit curator Connie H. Choi. “And so he was utilizing materials that were easily accessible – Christmas tree light bulbs, and also Buick backup light lenses.”
Lloyd, she added, tried to engage the senses to make his works more accessible via flashing, multicolored lights, the heat of hundreds of incandescent bulbs, and the clicking of control boxes.
Lloyd’s pieces have been meticulously refurbished and modernized for posterity. Their incandescent bulbs have been replaced with LEDs, and their control boxes have been upgraded to models that no longer click – yet sound still rings through the echoing room.
“The clicking that you hear is a replication of what the original control boxes would’ve sounded like,” said Choi. They recreated it, because so many people who love Lloyd’s work love that sound. Many of his relatives are expected at the museum’s grand opening. “When we open to the public on Nov. 15, I think we will have an entire celebration of the extended Lloyd family,” said Choi.
They surely won’t be the only ones in attendance. To celebrate the opening, the Museum is hosting a Community Day “that will activate the entire building, welcoming everyone from the Museum’s surrounding communities and beyond.” It takes place from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday and includes DJ sets, games, art-making workshops and more.