The Studio Museum in Harlem comes alive this spring with the installation of seven new exhibitions and artists' projects. Traveling to the Studio Museum from the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago,
David Hartt: Stray Light offers an intimate look inside the Johnson Publishing Company's iconic former headquarters.
Fred Wilson: Local Color,
Assembly Required: Selections from the Permanent Collection, and
Brothers and Sisters all feature highlights from the Studio Museum's collection, including recently acquired classics, rarely seen masterworks and brand-new innovations.
Ayé A. Aton: Space-Time Continuum and
Mendi + Keith Obadike: American Cypher present focused looks at recent projects, while
Harlem Postcards Spring 2013 continues the Museum's signature project to bring fresh perspectives to the Harlem landscape. On view March 28 to June 30, 2013, these diverse presentations exemplify the Museum's commitment to promoting and celebrating the wide range of artistic contributions of artists of African descent and work inspired and influenced by black culture.
Also on view through June 30, 2013
Gordon Parks: A Harlem Family 1967 honors the legacy and the work of late iconic artist and photojournalist Gordon Parks, who would have turned 100 on November 30, 2012. The exhibition, organized by Thelma Golden and Lauren Haynes, will feature approximately thirty black and white photographs of the Fontenelle family, whose lives Parks documented as part of a 1968 LIFE magazine photo essay. A searing portrait of poverty in the United States, the Fontenelle photographs provide a view of Harlem through the narrative of a specific family at a particular moment in time. This intimate exhibition will include all images from the original essay as well as several unpublished images—some which have never been displayed publicly before.
Harlem Postcards: Tenth Anniversary represents the enormous, yet nuanced range of images created for the Museum's signature project series. While many artists have been drawn to the visual vibrancy of Harlem—from its architecture to its colorful commercial goods—others seek to reveal its surprising, less familiar corners, or focus on the histories of Harlem's different communities. Aiming the camera at the sidewalk, the storefront and the sky, artists have reinvented the notion of what belongs on a postcard, and what it means to represent a neighborhood to those who do not live there. Celebrating the creativity of artists within the set limitations of 4 by 6 inches, this installation displays the postcards as aesthetic rather than functional objects.
Remembering Merton D. Simpson
The Studio Museum in Harlem would like to acknowledge the passing of artist Merton D. Simpson (1928–2013). Simpson was a part of Spiral, a collective founded in 1963, and was exhibited widely individually and with fellow Spiral artists.
An early and avid collector and dealer of African art, Simpson was inspired by the formal elements of African sculptural objects, which he uses to create powerful abstract paintings featuring bold color and broad, roughly painted geometric forms. Among Simpson's best known works are the primarily black-and-white figurative paintings in his "Confrontations" series, created throughout the 1960s in response to the social and political turmoil of the Civil Rights Movement.
Simpson was the recipient of many awards and honors, including a South Carolinian Library Research Archives Award (1984); an honor at The Studio Museum in Harlem's 2002 Fall Gala; and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the College of Charleston in South Carolina (2010). His many solo and group exhibitions include Younger American Painters at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Watercolor Exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (both 1954); The Journey of an Artist at the Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina (1995); Confrontations at the Greenville Museum, Greenville, South Carolina (2010); and Spiral: Perspectives on an African-American Art Collective at the Studio Museum (2011). His work is in the collections of the Romare Bearden Foundation, New York; the Detroit Art Institute; and The Studio Museum in Harlem, among others.
He will be missed.
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