Uptown Fridays Returns to the Studio Museum in Harlem

HARLEM, NEW YORK, NY, TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 2026 — Uptown Fridays, the Studio Museum in Harlem’s iconic summer event series, returns on Friday, July 10, with DJ sets and live performances on four Friday evenings in July and August.

Uptown Fridays began at the Museum in the summer of 2000 as a space to celebrate art, music, and community. This summer, the Museum invites its neighbors from Harlem and beyond back uptown to its newly reopened building, where the Stoop and the fifth floor will be activated by DJs and musicians playing, remixing, and redefining sounds from the African diaspora. Tickets for Uptown Fridays’ July events are now available online, with more details about ticketing and performances to be announced.

The lineup for the first Uptown Fridays series in the Museum’s new purpose-built home highlights the rich landscape of New York City’s musical scene. Born in Harlem and raised between New York City and the Dominican Republic, Sterling Juan Diaz’s sets reflect his upbringing shuttling between the Latin Caribbean and New York. BLKshine (Darryl DeAngelo Terrell), the Detroit-born Brooklyn-based DJ, draws from the musical traditions of Detroit, Chicago, and New York City, blending house, soul, funk, disco, hip-hop, and jazz. Marcus Logan, a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary creative and resident DJ at The Good Good, The Shed, and the Swan Room at Nine Orchard Hotel, creates immersive musical journeys rooted in hip-hop, R&B, broken beat, baile funk, jazz, soul, funk, house, amapiano, and global rhythms. Music producer and curator Terrance Thomas of On the Hush/OTH Songs, a New York-based music publishing company, co-organizes an evening of music from the label’s artists, featuring ambient tunes by A Space for Sound (Rena Anakwe), cerebral soundscapes from keiyaA, and an R&B-inspired set by rapper SALIMATA. Studio Museum collection artist Juliana Huxtable takes over with a genre-fusing, worldbuilding set; and Chicago-born antidisciplinary artist MORENXXX (Jesús Hilario Reyes), whose artworks appear in Fade, weaves riotous techno with rapturous percussion, creating rhythms and grooves that defy genres.

Tickets to Uptown Fridays include access to the fifth and sixth floors as well as the Museum’s galleries, where audiences can experience Fade, the latest edition of the Museum’s “F” show series of exhibitions of work by emerging artists; From Now: A Collection in Context, a dynamic, shifting installation of thematic exchanges drawn entirely from the Museum collection; To Be a Place, a visual timeline of historical documents, media, and programming ephemera that lays out a concise and detailed narrative of the Museum; and Through Motion and Repose: Expanding the Walls 2026, which features photography by the seventeen artists in this year’s cohort of the Museum's signature teen program, Expanding the Walls: Making Connections Between Photography, History, and Community. Elsewhere in the Museum, visitors can unwind on the roof terrace where they can enjoy unparalleled views of downtown, drop-in to artmaking workshops, and enjoy three site-specific installations, including Kapwani Kiwanga: BLEED (2026), Christopher Myers: Harlem Is a Myth (2025), and Camille Norment: Untitled (heliotrope) (2025).

Visitors can access all other floors with standard general admission to the Museum.

Line Up
Friday, July 10, 6:00 to 10:00 pm
Sterling Juan Diaz
BLKshine
Marcus Logan

Friday, July 31, 6:00 to 10:00 pm
Co-organized by Terrance Thomas of On the Hush/OTH Songs
A Space for Sound
keiyaA
SALIMATA

Friday, August 14, 6:00 to 10:00 pm
Full lineup to be announced

Friday, August 28, 6:00 to 10:00 pm
Full lineup to be announced

Uptown Fridays Tickets
Includes access to the Museum and one signature cocktail, provided by Hennessy, or mocktail per guest
$20 General Admission
$15 Studio Museum Members

Support for Uptown Fridays
Uptown Fridays’ signature cocktail is provided by Hennessy

About the Studio Museum in Harlem
Founded in 1968 by a diverse group of artists, community activists, and philanthropists, the Studio Museum in Harlem is internationally known for its catalytic role in promoting the work of artists of African descent. The Studio Museum’s new home, situated at its longtime location on West 125th Street, opened to the public on November 15, 2025. Designed by Adjaye Associates with Cooper Robertson serving as executive architect, the building—the first created expressly for the institution’s program—enables the Studio Museum to better serve a growing and diverse audience, provide additional educational opportunities for people of all ages, expand its program of world-renowned exhibitions, effectively display its singular collection, and strengthen its trailblazing Artist-in-Residence program.

For more information, visit studiomuseum.org.

Visitor Information
The Studio Museum in Harlem is located at 144 West 125th Street, between Malcolm X Boulevard (Lenox Avenue) and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard (Seventh Avenue).

The Studio Museum is open Wednesday through Sunday, from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm, with extended hours on Friday and Saturday, from 11:00 am to 9:00 pm.

The Museum is open to Members on Saturday mornings, from 10:00 to 11:00 am, before the galleries open to the public.

Admission rates are offered as a suggestion, with Sundays free for everyone. Suggested rates are $16 for adults and $9 for seniors (sixty-five years and over), students, and visitors with disabilities (care partners are free). Admission is free for children sixteen and under.

Tickets to the Studio Museum may be purchased online at studiomuseum.org/visit or at the Museum.

Media Contact
Sasha Cordingley
Studio Museum in Harlem
[email protected]