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Education

Partnerships

The Studio Museum cultivates partnerships with public schools and community organizations in Harlem and across New York City. 

Each partnership is tailored to the goals, strengths and needs of each organization, and designed to build connections to art and artists of African descent through visual arts-based experiences. Partnership sessions may include artist visits, hands-on art making projects, discussion around artwork in the permanent collection, walking tours to public art sites in Harlem, family art workshops, and teacher professional development.

School Partnerships

School partnerships reflect the Studio Museum’s deep commitment to schools in Harlem and across New York City. Since its founding in 1968, the Museum has prioritized in-school partnerships that focus on connecting artists with the whole school community, including students, parents, educators, and administrators.

See Ongoing School Partnerships

Community Partnerships

Community Partnerships in Harlem and across New York City reflect the Studio Museum’s commitment to engaging youth and adults beyond the traditional classroom and museum visit and through experiences and interdisciplinary approaches to programs that foster personal and collective connections through art.


Partnerships are designed to complement the partner organizations’ mission through with engagement with visual art; Community Partnerships build safe spaces, support existing programs, and cultivate new ideas.

Ongoing Partnerships

Ali Forney Center is an organization that serves LGBTQ houseless youth. Ali Forney’s mission is to protect LGBTQ youth from houselessness and empower them with the tools to live independently. These participant-designed and directed workshops focus on queer artists of African descent, creating and sharing community resources, and building interdisciplinary safe places to gather.
In collaboration with The Center for Justice in Education The Heyman Center for Humanities, the Department of Art History and Archeology at Columbia University, and the NYC Department of Corrections, The Studio Museum works with several housing facilities on Rikers Island, NYC’s principal jail complex. Over the past four years, we have collaborated with Rose M. Singer Center and Otis Bantum Correctional Center for partnerships focused on creating moments of safety, care, healing, and community building through art.
Hetrick-Martin Institute (HMI) is a community-based organization that serves LGBTQ youth from ages thirteen to twenty-four. HMI is partners with Harvey Milk High School, a District 2 public transfer school in the East Village that serves students from 9th through 12th grade who have not met success in other high schools. For six years, the Studio Museum has collaborated with HMI’s open art studio by examining the connections between visual art, performance, and writing.
AHRC Fisher Day Center and Urban Innovations are community-based organizations that support the creative and financial independence of Harlem’s young adults and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, helping individuals live self-determined lives. We collaborate at East Harlem Neighborhood Health Action Center, a part of the NYC Department of Health that brings together health care providers and community-based organizations to build drop-in community art workshops.
The Fortune Society is an organization that supports successful re-entry from incarceration and promotes alternatives to incarceration. Castle Gardens is their residence located in Harlem. We work together to transform the community spaces in their residence into art studios and explore art in Harlem.
The Center for Court Innovation works to achieve justice and equity, create safe, healthy, and thriving communities; and ultimately transform justice systems. They operate programs in community organizations, justice centers, and courts in New York City, Upstate New York, and New Jersey. These programs are making an impact on the ground in dozens of communities, and testing new ideas for improving the justice system. The Studio Museum partners with The Center for Court Innovation at the Harlem Community Justice center where we work with teens and young adults on collaborative creative projects in Harlem.

Arts and Minds

The Studio Museum partners with Arts & Minds to bring adults with memory disorders and their caregivers together in new experiences with art. Programs invite participants to share reflections, ideas, and stories inspired by works of art. Through gallery discussions and hands-on art activities, Arts & Minds opens a window to creativity and well-being. 

Arts & Minds brings adults with memory disorders and their caregivers together in new experiences of art. Join us for a lively discussion of the current exhibitions during a guided tour and art-making workshop. Through gallery discussions and hands-on art activities, Arts & Minds opens a window to creativity and well-being.