NEW YORK, NY.- Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, announced five new exhibitions and projects: Circa 1970, Black Cowboy, VideoStudio: Meeting Points, The Window and the Breaking of the Window and Harlem Postcards Fall/ Winter 2016–17.

Circa 1970 features a wide-ranging selection of works drawn from the Museum’s unparalleled collection, including recent major gifts, to revisit a crucial decade for African-American culture and the Studio Museum itself. Black Cowboy pays tribute to an infrequently acknowledged but centuries-old tradition—and complicates one of the central myths of popular culture— by presenting photographs and cinematic materials about present-day African-American communities where the keeping and training of horses remain a way of life. VideoStudio: Meeting Points presents three videos exploring the formation of identity through cultural exchange, while The Window and the Breaking of the Window explores ways black artists have born witness to injustice and protest.

“Each of these exhibitions in its own way brings the past into the present—which is a great thing for us to do as the Studio Museum approaches its fiftieth anniversary in 2018, and as we continue preparing to build the first home designed specifically for our needs, by Adjaye Associates with Cooper Robertson,” says Thelma Golden. “With its wonderful new acquisitions exhibited side-byside with classic works from our collection, Circa 1970 is a celebration of the ongoing relevance of the first decade of our existence. And with its astonishing images of contemporary African- American riders, Black Cowboy translates a chapter of the Old West into strikingly modern urban terms. At the same time, VideoStudio: Meeting Points and The Window and the Breaking of the Window continue the Museum’s long tradition of presenting work that can address crucial issues locally, nationally and internationally.”

Circa 1970
Following the tumultuous 1960s, which ushered in new victories in civil rights, the 1970s was a decade of firsts in American society, and particularly in black culture. Many major American cities elected African-American mayors for the first time, and in 1972 Shirley Chisholm became the first black person and the first woman to run for the presidential nomination of a major party. The early 1970s was also a moment of transition in the art world, as black artists including Alma Thomas, Melvin Edwards and Richard Hunt received exhibitions at mainstream New York art museums. For The Studio Museum in Harlem, the 1970s was the first full decade of operation, when the institution laid the foundations for much of its work today.

Documenting, evoking and reflecting upon this key decade in black culture and history, Circa 1970 presents paintings, drawings, prints, photographs and sculpture made between 1970 and 1979, all drawn from the Studio Museum’s collection. The exhibition features works by two dozen artists, including Benny Andrews, Romare Bearden, McArthur Binion, Robert Blackburn, Elizabeth Catlett-Mora, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Ed Clark, Beauford Delaney, Samuel Fosso, David Hammons, Sam Gilliam, Senga Nengudi, Betye Saar, Malick Sidibé and Frank Stewart. Among them are recent gifts of art made to the Studio Museum’s collection—including works by Binion, Blackburn and Hammons—evidence of the relationships that began during this rich decade and continue today.

Circa 1970 is organized by Lauren Haynes, former Associate Curator, Permanent Collection, at The Studio Museum in Harlem and now Curator, Contemporary Art, at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

VideoStudio: Meeting Points
A new presentation in the Museum’s VideoStudio series offers three videos that explore the formation of identity through cultural exchange. Works by Theo Eshetu, Ezra Wube and Zineb Sedira depict complex European and African interactions in the context of slavery, colonialism and contemporary immigration. In these videos, marketplaces and ports from Germany to Algeria to Ethiopia act as sites for the negotiation of value and identity.

VideoStudio: Meeting Points is organized by Hallie Ringle, Assistant Curator, The Studio Museum in Harlem.

The Window and the Breaking of the Window
Since its founding in 1968, the Studio Museum has exhibited work by black artists committed to bearing witness to acts of protest. Now, in an exhibition that takes its name from one of Pope.L’s “Skin Set” drawings, Black People Are the Window and the Breaking of the Window (2004), the Studio Museum provides a focused look at current and historical expressions of protest through works of art primarily drawn from the Museum’s collection. The Window and the Breaking of the Window includes work by Devin Allen, Alice Attie, Deborah Grant, Steffani Jemison, Kerry James Marshall and more.

Black Cowboy
Mention the word “cowboy,” and the image that most often comes to mind—from American paintings, vintage films and television shows—is a lone ranger astride a noble white horse overlooking the plains of the Wild West. This icon of white masculinity is ubiquitous.

But in colonial America, the work of cowboys was often done by enslaved men who had learned to be adept cattle herders in West Africa. During the period we think of as the Old West, one in four U.S. cowboys was African-American. The exhibition Black Cowboy is a contribution toward overcoming their omission from history and imagination, and toward demonstrating that their tradition is alive and well today in places as close to the Studio Museum as Rockaway, Queens, and Philadelphia, as well as in the contemporary West, in Oklahoma, Texas and Los Angeles.

The Window and the Breaking of the Window is organized by Amanda Hunt, Associate Curator, The Studio Museum in Harlem.

Black Cowboy offers a snapshot of African-American communities with long histories of keeping and training horses, represented primarily through photographs and cinematic materials. Visitors to the exhibition will find cowboys in unexpected locations—riding down a busy city avenue, for example— or in complex situations, such as a rodeo held within the confines of a state prison. The images will show that African-American children and women, too, can take on the aura of this figure, who symbolizes our country’s independence and stoic pride. Black Cowboy expands our idea of what constitutes an American icon and legacy, and complicates a narrative that has been tightly woven into our popular culture.

Black Cowboy is organized by Amanda Hunt.

Harlem Postcards
Harlem Postcards Fall/Winter 2016–17 is the latest installment in an ongoing project that invites contemporary artists to reflect on the many sides of Harlem: as a site of cultural activity, political vitality, visual stimulation, artistic contemplation and creative production. This season, Harlem Postcards features work by Gail Anderson, Nayland Blake, Zoë Buckman and Talwst, whose images, both intimate and dynamic, reflect the idiosyncratic visions of artists from a wide range of backgrounds and locations. Each image has been reproduced as a limited-edition postcard and is available free to Studio Museum visitors.

Harlem Postcards Fall/Winter 2016–17 is organized by Adeze Wilford, Studio Museum / MoMA Curatorial Fellow.