Installation view of Sadie Barnette: The New Eagle Creek Saloon, The Kitchen, New York, January 18, 2022–March 6, 2022. Photo: Adam Reich
Jan 18—Mar 6, 2022
The Studio Museum in Harlem, in collaboration with The Kitchen, presents Sadie Barnette’s The New Eagle Creek Saloon, the first East Coast institutional presentation of the artist’s installation reimagining the first Black-owned gay bar in San Francisco. Established by the artist’s father, Rodney Barnette, founder of the Compton, CA, chapter of the Black Panther Party, The New Eagle Creek Saloon (operated by Barnette between 1990–1993) offered a safe space for the multiracial queer community who were marginalized in other social spaces throughout the city.
A study published in 2019 by professor of sociology Greggor Mattson cites a continued decline of LGBTQ+ bars across the United States between 2007 and 2019, with a disparate impact on those serving female-identified people and people of color. Presented for the first time in New York City on the heels of the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall uprising, The New Eagle Creek Saloon celebrates the history of queer Black space and resurrects its presence in a location in the city (Chelsea) where this legacy has been so instrumental to avant-garde art and performance.
Within and in response to Barnette’s installation, The Kitchen launches its first-ever nightlife and club culture residency, from madison moore, cultural critic, DJ, Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, and author of Fabulous: The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric (Yale University Press, 2018).
These artists’ visions come into lyrical and urgent intersection across the duration of the exhibition and residency period, with DJ sets from nightlife practitioners scheduled across four Saturday Sessions kicking off on January 22 with Shaun J. Wright, with more to be announced as part of madison moore's Nightlife-in-Residence. In the periods where Barnette’s installation is not programmed, recordings from previous presentations will be played into the room. These sonic activations gesture toward the ongoing endurance of queer histories and hold space for the somatic archives of disappeared or lost queer space over time.
History similarly echoes across a zine created by Barnette which will be made available to visitors for takeaway, filled with newspaper clippings, ephemera, and photographs.
More info on madison moore: Nightlife-in-Residence can be found here.
Sadie Barnette: The New Eagle Creek Saloon and madison moore: Nightlife-in-Residence are organized by Legacy Russell, Executive Director & Chief Curator, The Kitchen.
Sadie Barnette: The New Eagle Creek Saloon is made possible with generous support from Bernard I. Lumpkin & Carmine D. Boccuzzi, Agnes Gund, and Olivier Berggruen & Desiree Welsing; annual grants from Open Society Foundations, Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, and Keith Haring Foundation; and in part by public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.