Hurvin Anderson, ‘Peter’s Series: Back’, 2008, Courtesy the artist and Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco, Photo: Ira Schrank

British painter Hurvin Anderson (b. 1965, Birmingham, United Kingdom) takes private and public gathering spaces as his primary subjects.

Khalif Kelly, Ascent to the Big Top, 2009, Courtesy the artist and Thierry Goldberg Projects, New York

Adam Pendleton, Ceramic Black Cubes, 2007-ongoing (detail), Courtesy the artist

Dawit L. Petros, untitled (boundary), 2009, Courtesy the artist

The 2008–09 artists in residence, Khalif Kelly, Adam Pendleton and Dawit L. Petros, consider looking at an artwork akin to the act of reading.

Sasha Smith,
Up, Up and Away, 2009, Courtesy the artist

Expanding the Walls: Making Connections between Photography, History and Community is an annual, seven-month, photography-based program that uses the James VanDerZee (1886–1983) archive—housed at The Studio Museum in Harlem—as a springboard for conversation and art-making.

Derrick Adams, Joe Louis Boxing Gym (Police Athletic League, 119th & Manhattan Ave), 2009, Courtesy the artist

Throughout the twentieth century, Harlem has been regarded as a beacon of African-American history and culture.

Photo: Brian Ferguson

The abstract ethereal beats from StudioSound artist Ramon Silva’s Dreaming in Sound are at once nostalgic and contemporary, evoking the languor and beauty of a remembered or imagined summertime.

Adam Pendleton, Collected (Flamingo George), 2009, Photo: Russell Watson

For Collection Imagined, inaugural artist Adam Pendleton (artist in residence 2008–09), used the titles of works in the permanent collection to create Collected (Flamingo George) (2009), installed on the wall of the Studio Museum’s courtyard.

Romare Bearden, Prelude to Farewell, 1981, The Studio Museum in Harlem; gift of Altria Group, Inc. 08.13.2

Collected. Propositions on the Permanent Collection presents fourteen takes on the permanent collection of The Studio Museum in Harlem.

Photo: Grant Delin

Kalup Linzy: If it Don’t Fit is the first museum survey of the artist’s work, and includes over twenty videos made over the last seven years, a drawing suite and a one-night acoustic performance.

Shinique Smith: Like it Like that, Installation view, Photo: Adam Reich

Multimedia artist, Shinique Smith, has activated the Studio Museum Project Space with Like it Like that, an installation designed specially for the gallery.

Lorna Simpson, Tree, 2009, Courtesy the artist

The Studio Museum’s ongoing series, Harlem Postcards, invites contemporary artists of diverse backgrounds to reflect on Harlem as a site for artistic contemplation and production.

Photo: Joshua Okrent

StudioSound invites musicians, producers and musical innovators to create original compositions inspired by the works on view.

Barkley L. Hendricks, Sweet Thang (Lynn Jenkins), 1975, Courtesy Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University

This fall, The Studio Museum in Harlem will be the second stop for the first career retrospective of renowned African-American painter Barkley L. Hendricks (b. 1945).

Carla Edwards, Dreamery Re-Do’s and Such (still), 2004, Courtesy the artist

VideoStudio is a new, ongoing series of video and time-based art. Just as the frames of a video change with the passing of time, this project presents programs that rotate monthly.

Shinique Smith will be the second artist to activate the Project Space with an installation designed and executed especially for the gallery.

Lauren Kelley, Church Picnic, 2008, Courtesy the artist

The Studio Museum’s ongoing series, Harlem Postcards, invites contemporary artists of diverse backgrounds to reflect on Harlem as a site for artistic contemplation and production.

Kehinde Wiley, Rubin Singleton, 2008, Courtesy artist and Deitch Projects

The World Stage: Africa, Lagos ~ Dakar is Kehinde Wiley’s (b. 1977) first solo exhibition at The Studio Museum in Harlem and features ten new paintings from his multinational “The World Stage” series.

Tanea Richardson, In Protection of Our Bodies, 2008, Courtesy the artist, Photo: Marc Bernier

Leslie Hewitt, Riffs on Real Time (1 of 10), 2006-9, Courtesy the artist

Saya Woolfalk, Self (adolescent – pink) and Self (adolescent – blue), 2008, Courtesy the artist, Photo: Marc Bernier

The Studio Museum’s mezzanine galleries will be transformed by three bodies of new work and site-specific installations in New Intuitions. Leslie Hewitt, Tanea Richardson and Saya Woolfalk have markedly distinct practices, but each artist insists on raising questions about our accepted ways of seeing reality.

Senga Nengudi, R.S.V.P. V, fall 1976, Courtesy Thomas Erben Gallery, New York

Rashawn Griffin, Untitled (detail), 2008, Courtesy the artist, Photo: Collier Schorr

Senga Nengudi (b. 1943) is a truly multidisciplinary artist whose career has covered dance, sculpture, installation, video, text and performance.

Christeen Penon, Cognate Souls, 2008, Courtesy the artist

The young photographers in this year’s Expanding the Walls exhibition, Eye Notes, approach documentary art in a variety of ways as they present their work alongside a selection of James VanDerZee’s classic Harlem portraits.

Edgar Arceneaux, 1968, 1997, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Courtesy the artist

Nearly forty years ago, shortly after opening its doors to the public, The Studio Museum in Harlem established its permanent collection through the generosity of both artists and donors.

Miguel Calderón, Purple Haze/Purple Rain, 2008

The Studio Museum’s ongoing series, Harlem Postcards, invites contemporary artists of diverse backgrounds to reflect on Harlem as a site for artistic contemplation and production.

George E. Lewis

StudioSound invites musicians, producers and musical innovators to create original compositions inspired by the works on view. Travelogue, the latest iteration of StudioSound, presents at least eight hours of sonic environments, but was nearly twenty years in the making, according to George E. Lewis, its creator. Lewis’s career provided many opportunities for him to travel, and handheld cameras documented his voyages to places such as the Great Wall of China. On further reflection, Lewis says, “I pointed my camera at things that sounded good.” Nearly twenty years of that reflex produced Travelogue.

Dawit L. Petros, Proposition 1: Mountain, 2007

Flow is the first twenty-first century exhibition focusing on art by a new generation of international artists from Africa. These artists are uniquely conscious of, and responsive to, recent African history, global economics and the idiosyncratic culture of the new millennium.

Charles Ethan Porter, Cherries, 1885

Charles Ethan Porter (c. 1847-1923) is under-recognized today but was revered in his own time by well-known contemporaries such as Henry Ossawa Tanner and Edmonia Lewis, who worked in a more popular, figurative tradition. His paintings are masterpieces of American still-life tradition.

DJ Kemit

StudioSound invites musicians, producers and musical innovators to create original compositions inspired by the works on view. From Daniel Bernard Roumain’s classically inspired interpretation of Chris Ofili’s watercolors to DJ Scientific’s remix and reinvention of Harlem sounds, this commissioned project activates the Museum’s lobby and adds a parallel dimension to the art and artists on view.