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Studio Magazine is the leading magazine with a focus on artists of African descent locally, nationally, and internationally. The publication, well into its second decade of circulation, appears in print biannually and is updated here.
Fifty years after its founding, the Studio Museum remains at the forefront of institutions for artists of African descent, providing a haven for artists to create and see their work in, and be inspired by, the work of others.
The Studio Museum was founded in 1968 amidst an atmosphere of national and global activism. The year brought the collective shock over the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, as well public outrage and demonstrations against the Vietnam War.
The Studio Museum in Harlem came into being as a space to support artists of the African diaspora, who, throughout history, had been largely shut out of exhibition and commercial opportunities.
1968 was a year of turmoil and change: Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated; riots and protests dominated the Democratic National Convention in Chicago; and the Vietnam War continued to rage; claiming the lives of thousands of innocent civilians and soldiers alike.
The Studio Museum in Harlem opened in 1968—a watershed year that included the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F.
Photo Studio was part of a year-long initiative, beginning in 2017, to make the Studio Museum's permanent collection increasingly accessible to the public.
The first time Derrick Adams saw Patrick Kelly, it was while casually flipping through his sister’s fashion magazines. As a teenager in Baltimore, Adams was used to the menswear stylings of his father and older brother—both sharp dressers in their own rights.
This summer, in a unique institutional collaboration, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh and The Studio Museum in Harlem opened 20/20, a group exhibition with works by forty artists, twenty from each institution’s collection. Responding to a tumultuous and deeply divided moment in our nation’s history, the exhibition’s co-curators, Eric Crosby and Amanda Hunt, mined these collections to offer a metaphoric picture of America today.
Of the four hundred artists in The Studio Museum in Harlem’s permanent collection, 137 are immigrants to the United States or are based abroad. This diverse array of artists is impressive for an institution that is only turning fifty next year.
As I continue with my fellowship in the Studio Museum archive, I have come to fully appreciate the role the Museum plays as an influencer of black culture across the world.
Trained in film and photography, Nance creates works that investigate and celebrate African and African-American history and life.
In July, The Studio Museum in Harlem opened the summer season with Their Own Harlems. The title of the exhibition comes from an interview with Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000) conducted with the Archives of American Art in 1968. In the interview, he comments on his early career spent living in Harlem; Lawrence believed that people of African descent could find similarly powerful and positive experiences in “their own Harlems.”
