The Studio Museum in Harlem Magazine / Spring 2007 From the Director SMH Board of to the museum can also pick up Trustees The Gift, a mix CD created by Raymond J. McGuire Paul D. Miller (a.k.a. DJ Spooky) Chairman as the new incarnation of Carol Sutton Lewis StudioSound. Vice-Chair Reginald Van Lee Treasurer The Studio Museum in Harlem Magazine / Spring 2007 This issue of Studio is jam- Gayle Perkins Atkins This spring we are pleased to packed with features about art, Kathryn C. Chenault introduce the paintings of Henry artists and the Harlem com- Gordon J. Davis Taylor in Sis and Bra, the artist’s munity. Following our previous Anne B. Ehrenkranz fi rst solo museum exhibition. features hrlm: beautiful people Susan Fales-Hill Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. Also on view is the fi lm installa- and hrlm: beautiful places, Eric Sandra Grymes Henderson trains his camera on Joyce Haupt unique and beautiful objects in Arthur J. Humphrey Jr. The Studio Museum in Harlem Harlem in the latest installment in George L. Knox has existed in several spaces this series, hrlm: beautiful things. Nancy L. Lane since its founding in the late Dr. Michael L. Lomax Tracy Maitland 02 / what’s up Philosophy of Time Travel / Sis and Bra / Duet /Harlem 1960s. Many of you have wit- I want to thank the supporters of Rodney M. Miller 12 nessed our transformation over all our spring exhibitions and pro- Eileen Harris Norton Postcards / upcoming exhibitions David Adjaye / Expanding the Walls the past ten years as our sculp- grams. The presentation of Phi- Corine Pettey / Artists-in-Residence 14 / elsewhere Comic Abstraction / Karyn Olivier / ture court, lobby and galleries losophy of Time Travel would not David A. Ross have been renovated and rede- have been possible without the Charles A. Shorter Jr. Hale Woodruff, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet and the Academy / Uncomfortable signed. This spring the Museum generous support of the Peggy Ann Tenenbaum John T. Thompson Truths / María Magdalena Campos-Pons / WACK! /Street Level / Global will experience another trans- tion Duet (2000) by 2006 Joyce Cooper Cafritz Foundation of Michael Winston formation, one imagined and Alexander Wein Artist Prize win- The Community Foundation for Karen A. Phillips Feminisms / Laylah Ali / Black Light/White Noise / Tate08 Series / Crossing created by an exciting group of ner Lorna Simpson. This project the National Capital Region, the ex-offi cio the Line 18 / artist commission Sanford Biggers 20 / feature Benny Andrews: young artists from Los Angeles. is presented in conjunction with Creative Capital Foundation and Hon. Kate D. Levin Edgar Arceneaux, Vincent Galen her fi rst mid-career retrospective, the Canada Council for the Arts. ex-offi cio A Reminiscence 23 / 3Q’s Barthélémy Toguo 24 / education and public Johnson, Olga Koumoundouros, on view at the Whitney Museum I also want to thank Bloomberg Studio programs 28 / checkout 29 / profi le R. Gregory Christie 30 / coloring page Rodney McMillian and Matthew of American Art through for their generous support of Sloly have developed Philosophy May 6, 2007. Studio magazine. Of course, Ali Evans 32 / feature hrlm: beautiful things 38 / SMH travel 40 / playlist 41 / studio visit of Time Travel, an exhibition that none of our work is possible Editor-in-chief Kianja Strobert 42 / feature Revisualizing the Black Arts Movement responds to our current space without the generous support of Lea K. Green and the Museum’s history. On the Studio Museum’s Board of Managing Editor 44 /staff picks 45 / StudioSound Paul D. Miller 46 / development news Gala page 3 of this issue the artists Trustees and our individual and Tiffany Hu corporate members. Assistant Editor 2006 48 / benefi t 49 /shop! 50 / donors Samir S. Patel Copy editor Original Design Concept See you around and defi nitely 2x4, New York uptown... Art Direction and Design Map, New York Jonathan Calm, Xavier Cha, Tou- Printing hami Ennadre and Berni Searle Cosmos speak with the exhibition’s cura- set their sights on the neighbor- Communications, Inc. tor, Christine Y. Kim, about the hood for the latest installment of Thelma Golden ideas behind this project. Harlem Postcards, and visitors Director and Chief Curator Studio is published three times a year by The Studio Museum in Harlem, 144 W. 125th St., New York, NY 10027. Copy- right © 2007 Studio Magazine. All material is compiled from sources believed to be reliable, but published without respon- sibility for errors or omissions. Studio assumes no responsibil- ity for unsolicited manuscripts or This issue of Studio is underwritten in part, with support from Bloomberg photographs. All rights, includ- ing translation into other lang- uages, reserved by the pub- lisher. Nothing in this publication may be reproduced without the Operation of The Studio Museum in Harlem is The Scherman Foundation, Inc., Tishman Speyer, permission of the publisher. supported with public funds provided by The New The Norman and Rosita Winston Foundation, Inc., Please email comments to York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Council Estate of Bobby Short, LEF Foundation, Gifts in [email protected]. Member Inez E. Dickens, 9th C.D., Speaker Chris- Honor of William M. Lewis, Jr., American Express tine Quinn and the New York City Council. Major Company, The Cowles Charitable Trust, Goldman, funding is also provided by The Peter Jay Sharp Sachs & Co., Corine Pettey, Altria Group Inc., Gayle Thelma’s photo: Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York P. Atkins, Peggy Cooper Cafritz, Credit Suisse Timothy Greenfi eld-Sanders and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state First Boston, Pfi zer, Inc., Michael L. Lomax, Sandra agency, with additional support from Kathryn C. Grymes, Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies Cover image: Chenault, Raymond J. McGuire, Reginald Van Lee, Matching Gifts Program, Gordon J. & Peggy Coo- Philosophy of Time Travel artists The New York Times Company Foundation, Estate per Davis, Oliver Kamm, Pierre and Maria-Gaetana CAD Drawing of Irene Wheeler; Anne & Joel Ehrenkranz, The Hor- Matisse Foundation, The Moody’s Foundation, H. 2006 ace W. Goldsmith Foundation, JP Morgan Chase, van Ameringen Foundation and Jide J. Zeitlin. Courtesy the artists Gary Simmons, boom, 1996–2003. Courtesy Museum of Modern Art, New York 02 / what’s up Studio / Spring 2007 03 / Studio / Spring 2007 What if history had a mind of its own, moving from the past, through the present and into the future? A team of fi ve artists is exploring this idea with a large-scale installa- tion, Philosophy of Time Travel, opening April 11, 2007, at The Studio Museum in Harlem. The installation evokes the work of modernist sculptor Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), forcefully and dynamically pushing his massive 1938 work, Endless Column, through the Studio Museum’s gallery space. The result is a fi ctional world in which history comes to life, crashes through the exhibition space and traverses through histories of art and museums. “Philosophy of Time Travel harnesses Brancusi’s seminal, classic modernist work to challenge the contemporary, as if the sculpture grew beyond its bounds and appeared, by magic or some cryptic science, in the Studio Museum,” says 02 Christine Y. Kim, Associate Curator at the Museum. “By be- ing installed here, at a culturally specifi c art institution, its commentaries on the nature of history and time are also vari- ously applied to the histories and structures of Harlem and African Americans.” Brancusi’s Endless Column, an outdoor sculpture in Târgu Jiu, Romania, is a 100–foot tall series of cast-iron rhombus shapes, resembling a stylized version of a traditional Roma- nian funerary pillar. In angling the vertical modules through the Studio Museum’s galleries−four of them penetrate through from fl oor to ceiling—the artists also recall the imag- ined fl ight of Brancusi’s classic Bird in Space series, one of 03 modernism’s great evocations of movement and grace. The installation brings the outside in, the past into the future, and the still into sinuous movement, shattering the walls of 03 the museum space and the present alike. Excerpt from Philosophy of Time Travel roundtable discussion with Edgar Arceneaux, Vincent Galen Johnson, Olga Koumoundouros, Rodney McMillian and Matthew Sloly. Moderated by Christine Y. Kim, January 13, 2007 Christine Y. Kim What are elements that each or all of you bringing together? When and how did you start thinking about the idea for this project? What is it about this project that necessitates such a variety of perspectives? Olga Koumoundouros I came in during the initial concept. In 2004, Rodney and I were focused in our art practice on issues of power and domination within the sociopolitical realm, as well as 04 American history. Actually, our work still has these concerns. Edgar brought us together to begin a dialogue with The Studio Museum in Harlem. This led us to begin acknowledging the relationship be- tween this ethnically specifi c museum and the art-historical canon. Clearly, the representation and distribution of African-American art is still problematic, but how would we discuss this? Together we came up with the earliest proposal of the Egyptian pyramid com- ing down at a forceful angle through the ceiling of the SMH gallery crushing a Greek Doric column. It was a battle of symbols in the 01–04 / Philosophy of Time Travel artists Sketches Western cultural foundation, i.e. Greek column versus the infl uential, 2006 however under-recognized African pyramid. We thought about ref- Courtesy the artists erencing the text, Black Athena: The Afro-Asiatic Roots of Classical 01 Civilization, by Martin Bernal, which decentralizes master narratives 04 / what’s up Studio / Spring 2007 05 / Studio / Spring 2007 by positing that the origination of Western thought and power is in correlation to their relationships to power.