THROUGHOUT NEW YORK CITY, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Jewish Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, and MoMA PS1, museums are presenting important exhibitions of African American artists. The following shows explore Alvin Ailey, Elizabeth Catlett, Belle da Costa Greene, Marlon Mullen, Latinx artists, design interpretations of ‘Making Home,’ and more. (Exhibitions are ordered by opening date, according to borough):
MANHATTAN
Clockwise, from top left, Alvin Ailey. Undated Photo by JOHN LINDQUIST. | © Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University; Coral Dolphin, Experience view of Edges of Ailey, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (Sept. 25, 2024-Feb. 9, 2025). | Courtesy of Whitney Museum of American Art, Photo by Natasha Moustache; JACK MITCHELL, Alvin Ailey, 1962. | Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation, Inc. © Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation, Inc. and Smithsonian Institution; LYNETTE YIADOM-BOAKYE, “A Knave Made Manifest,” 2024 (oil on linen, 78.7 x 70.8 x 1.4 inches (200 x 180 x 3.6 cm). | Courtesy the Artist, Corvi-Mora, London, and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
Edges of Ailey @ Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, N.Y. | Sept. 25, 2024-Feb. 9, 2025
“Edges of Ailey” is a soaring tribute to choreographer Alvin Ailey (1931-1989) that explores his life, legacy, and influences, and celebrates the beauty, artistry, and scholarship of his dances. The first major museum exhibition of Ailey presents a constellation of artworks by dozens of artists—including Emma Amos, Romare Bearden, Karon Davis, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, David Hammons, Barkley L. Hendricks, Jennifer Packer, Lorna Simpson, Mickalene Thomas, Kara Walker, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye—in conversation with a multi-screen video installation featuring footage from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Curated by Adrienne Edwards, the exhibition also features an expansive selection of rarely seen archival materials—notebooks, letters, poems, drawings, choreography notes, posters, performance programs, performance footage, and recorded interviews—drawn from the Alvin Ailey Archival Papers at the Black Archives of Mid America in Kansas City, Mo., and the Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation Archives Collection at the Library of Congress. The gallery presentation is accompanied by a robust program of live dance performances throughout the run of the show. The exhibition is curated by Adrienne Edwards, with Joshua Lubin-Levy and CJ Salapare, and assistance from Katie Fong.
Installation view of “Designer’s Choice: Norman Teague—Jam Sessions,” Museum of Modern Art, New York, N.Y., (Oct. 10, 2024-May 11, 2025). | Photo: Jonathan Dorado, Courtesy MoMA
Designer’s Choice: Norman Teague—Jam Sessions @ Museum of Modern Art, New York, N.Y. | Oct. 10, 2024-May 11, 2025
The Museum of Modern Art introduced a new exhibition series focused on design. The series echoes its Artist’s Choice exhibitions for which the museum invites artists to engage with its collection and organize a show. “Designer’s Choice: Norman Teague—Jam Sessions” is the inaugural presentation in the new series. A Chicago designer, Norman Teague (b. 1968) tapped women and people of color—groups underrepresented in the field of design—to reinterpret iconic works by acclaimed Western designers. More than 45 collection objects (furniture, electronics, ceramics, and glassware) by boldface names, such as Eero Saarinen, Mies van der Rohe, and Charles and Ray Eames, are presented in conversation with 19 new commissions, including four full-scale prototypes and 15 posters. The exhibition is curated by Teague with Paul Galloway.
“This exhibition is about highlighting what’s missing and advocating for a more expansive view of what deserves to be celebrated.” — Norman Teague
Installation view of Flow States – LA TRIENAL 2024, El Museo del Barrio, New York, N.Y. Shown, from left, WIDLINE CADET, “Ant yè ak demen (Between Yesterday and Tomorrow),” “Pou kouri dèyè syèl la To Chase the Sky),” “An Echo of Gratitude,” and Santiman fantom (Ghost Feelings),” all 2023. | Courtesy the artist and Nazarian/Curcio. Photo by Matthew Sherman/Courtesy El Museo del Barrio, New York
Flow States – La Trienal 2024 @ El Museo del Barrio, New York, N.Y. | Oct. 10, 2024-Feb. 9, 2025
Flow States, El Museo del Barrio’s 2024 triennial is organized by Rodrigo Moura, Susanna V. Temkin, and María Elena Ortiz. Reflecting the “complexity of diasporic flows,” the survey of Latinx contemporary art includes artists based in the United States and Puerto Rico, in addition to artists working in the Americas, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia, a first for the museum. The 33 participating artists include Widline Cadet, Gadiel Rivera Herrera, Caroline Kent, Anina Major, Karyn Olivier, Kathia St. Hilaire, Alberta Whittle, and Cosmo Whyte.
“The selected artists share interests related to transformation, porosities of landscape and the built environment, spiritual connections, collective memories, hybrid belongings, and material exchanges.”
Belle da Costa Greene in the West Room of J. Pierpont Morgan’s Library, circa 1948–50 (reproduction of a photographic print Center for Italian Renaissance Studies) Bernard and Mary Berenson Papers, Personal Photographs, Box 12, Folder 38. | Courtesy Morgan Library & Museum
Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy @ Morgan Library & Museum, New York, N.Y. | Oct. 25, 2024-May 4, 2025
A pioneering figure, Belle da Costa Greene (1879–1950) spent 24 years curating and building the foundational collection of the Morgan Library & Museum and served as the institution’s inaugural director. For the first time, this exhibition presents a comprehensive exploration the remarkable life and career of Greene, a Black librarian, scholar, and curator who passed as white. J.P. Morgan (1837-1913), the American banking tycoon, famously owned a collection of rare books, medieval manuscripts, and master drawings and prints. In 1905, Morgan hired Greene as his personal librarian and she was largely responsible for assembling the exceptional collection. After Morgan died, Greene continued in the role under his son, and became the first director when The Morgan was established as a public institution in 1924. Celebrating The Morgan’s centennial, the exhibition is curated by Philip Palmer and Erica Ciallela. The presentation features a selection of materials, including books, manuscripts, and portraits, that shed light on Greene’s legacy and background—her family history, education, and career, which included traveling internationally in pursuit of acquisitions.
Installation view of “So That You All Won’t Forget: Speculations on a Black Home in Rural Virginia” by Curry J. Hackett, Wayside Studio in “Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial” at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. | Photo: Elliot Goldstein © Smithsonian Institution
Making Home: Smithsonian Design Triennial @ Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, N.Y. | Nov. 2, 2024-Aug. 10, 2025
The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum launched its design triennial in 2000. Organized in collaboration with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, the seventh edition focuses on experiences of home. Presented across three themes—Going Home, Seeking Home, and Building Home—the exhibition features 25 new commissions installed throughout the museum. The diverse slate of participating artists, designers, and collectives, includes La Vaughn Belle; Black Artists + Designers Guild; Lori A. Brown, Trish Cafferky, and Yashica Robinson, MD; Mona Chalabi and SITU Research; Nicole Crowder and Hadiya Williams; Designing Justice + Designing Spaces; East Jordan Middle/High School (Michigan); Curry J. Hackett; Hugh Hayden; Terrol Dew Johnson (1973-2024); Joiri Minaya; Robert Earl Paige; William Scott; and Renée Stout. The exhibition is curated by Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, Christina L. De León, and Michelle Joan Wilkinson, with Sophia Gebara, Caroline O’Connell, Julie Pastor, and Isabel Strauss.
“Ranging from domestic objects to built environments to social systems, the exhibition considers home as an expansive framework with varying cultural and environmental contexts, and ‘making home’ as a universal design practice.”
From left, TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK, “Step and Screw: The Star of Code Switching,” 2020 (acrylic, synthetic fur, graphite, plastic bottle caps, and paper collage on canvas, 84 × 84 inches / 213.4 × 213.4 cm). | The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Arts Acquisition Committee Fund; PHILIP GUSTON, “The Studio,” 1969 (oil on canvas, 48 x 42 inches / 121.9 x 106.7 cm). | Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Promised gift of Musa Guston Mayer. © The Estate of Philip Guston
Draw Them In, Paint Them Out: Trenton Doyle Hancock Confronts Philip Guston @ Jewish Museum, New York, N.Y. | Nov. 8, 2024-March 30, 2025
Houston, Texas-based Trenton Doyle Hancock (b. 1974) has long-engaged with the work of Philip Guston (1913-1980), the son of Jewish immigrants from what is now Ukraine. A decade ago, Hancock began producing a series of paintings featuring Torpedo Boy, the artist’s alter ego, facing off with the comic Klan figures that recur in Guston’s work. The exhibition is curated by Rebecca Shaykin in partnership with Hancock. The presentation is the first to feature the work of both artists, drawing connections across their Klan works and “parallel thematic explorations of the nature of evil, self-representation, otherness, and art activism.”
FRED WILSON, “Grey Area (Brown version),” 1993 (pigment, plaster, and wood (20 x 84 inches / 50.8 x 213.4 cm); Each bust: 18 3/4 x 9 x 13 inches / 47.6 x 22.9 x 33 cm). | Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of William K. Jacobs, Jr. and bequest of Richard J. Kempe, by exchange (2008.6a–j)
Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now @ Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, N.Y. | Nov. 17, 2024-Feb. 17, 2025
This expansive exhibition explores how artists, writers, and musicians active from the 19th century, to the Harlem Renaissance and Black Arts Movement to today, have engaged with ancient Egypt. Featured artists include Aaron Douglas, Lois Mailou Jones, John Biggers, Houston Conwill, Awol Erizku, Sam Gilliam, David Hammons, Barbara Jones-Hogu, Armia Khalil, Julie Mehretu, Lorraine O’Grady, Betye Saar, Tavares Strachan, Fred Wilson and numerous others. Curated by Akili Tommasino, nearly 200 objects are presented across artworks, literature, album covers, and other mediums. Performance is also featured in the exhibition (represented by a documentary film and live performances), a first for the museum.
JEANNE MOUTOUSSAMY-ASHE, “Jake and his Boat Arriving on Daufuskie’s Shore, Daufuskie Island, SC,” 1981, printed 2022 (gelatin silver print, 15 × 22 1/2 inches / 38.1 × 57.2 cm). | Whitney Museum of Americna Art, New York; Purchase with funds from Donna Perret Rosen and Benjamin M. Rosen 2023.114.6. © Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe
Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe and the Last Gullah Islands @ Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, N.Y. | Dec. 5, 2024-May 2025
Artist, activist, and scholar Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe (b. 1951) visited Daufuskie Island for the first time in 1977 and began photographing the people and structures that form the remote Gullah Geechee community situated between Hilton Head, S.C., and Savannah, Ga. She captured the shoreline; youth and elders; men boiling crabs; domestic scenes; and a bride, groom, and their guests gathered in front of the white clapboard facade of Union Baptist Church. Organized by Kelly Long, the exhibition features 13 black-and-white photographs (dated 1977 to 1981) from the Whitney Museum’s collection. The display includes a selection of related publications by Moutoussamy-Ashe.
For half a century, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe has “made photographs that testify to the beauty and complexity of Black life, honoring the rhythms of the everyday and marking important rites of passage for the people who appear in them.”
MARLON MULLEN, Untitled. 2024 (acrylic on canvas, 48 × 40 inches / 121.9 × 101.6 cm). | Courtesy the artist, NIAD Art Center, and Adams and Ollman © 2024 Marlon Mullen. Photo by Chris Grunder
Projects: Marlon Mullen @ Museum of Modern Art, New York, N.Y. | Dec. 14, 2024-April 20, 2025
Marlon Mullen (b. 1963) is inspired by art magazines and other published material. He has reimagined the covers of Artforum, Frieze, and Art in America, producing striking works “in which text and image are transformed through his dynamic color and composition.” Since 1986, Mullen has been honing his craft at NIAD Art Center in Richmond, Calif., a progressive studio that serves artists with developmental disabilities. This is the first solo exhibition of the artist at a major museum. Twenty-five paintings, dating from 2015 to 2024, are on view with a selection of source materials in MoMA’s free, street-level Projects gallery. Ann Temkin curated the exhibition, with Alexandra Morrison, in close collaboration with Emma Jaromin, Theresa Rodewald, Cindy Chong, Jamaal Hooker, and Lana Hum.
BRONX
Installation view of FUTURA 2000: Breaking Out, Bronx Museum of the Arts, 2024-25. Shown, from left, “Sports in Space” (1984), “Jump Off” (1988), and “El Diablo” (1985). | Courtesy the artist and The Bronx Museum. Photos by Argenis Apolinario, 2024
Futura 2000: Breaking Out @ Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, N.Y. | Sept. 8, 2024-March 30, 2025
In 1980, FUTURA 2000 (aka Leonard Hilton McGurr, b. 1955) painted the entire exterior of a New York City subway car with a brilliant display of color and would proudly watch as his work passed by on the train tracks not too far from The Bronx Museum of the Arts. “FUTURA 2000: Breaking Out” is the most comprehensive exhibition of the artist in his hometown. The title of the five-decade retrospective was informed by that early subway installation. Over the years, Futura has evolved from graffiti art to contemporary abstraction, but he still works with spray paint and explores his fascination with space and science fiction in his work. Curated by Robert Scalise and Zack Boehler, in collaboration with Eileen Jeng Lynch, the exhibition features sculptures, drawings, prints, archival materials, collaborations, and a new site specific installation.
BROOKLYN
ELIZABETH CATLETT, “Black Unity,” 1968 (cedar, 21 × 12 1/2 × 24 inches / 53.3 × 31.8 × 61 cm). | Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Ark., 2014.11. © 2024 Mora-Catlett Family / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Photo: Edward G. Robinson III
Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies @ Brooklyn Museum, New York, N.Y. | Sept. 13, 2024-Jan. 19, 2025
The first comprehensive examination of Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012), this exhibition brings broader, long-overdue attention to the politically astute artist and activist. Best known for her figurative sculptures and powerful printmaking, Catlett explored civil rights issues and the experiences of women in her work. Co-curated by Dalila Scruggs, Catherine Morris, and Mary Lee Corlett, the exhibition presents more than 200 works. Among the highlights, are rarely seen sculptures and paintings, as well as archival materials. Born in Washington, D.C., Catlett was active in Chicago, New Orleans, Virginia, and New York, and spent the last six decades of her life in Mexico.
Closing this weekend, “Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies” is traveling next to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (March 9-July 6, 2025) and the Art Institute of Chicago (Aug. 30, 2025-Jan. 4, 2026)
QUEENS
Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2023–24 cohort. From left, Malcolm Peacock, Zoë Pulley, sonia louise davis. | Photo: Courtney Sofiah Yates, Courtesy MoMA PS1
Pass Carry Hold: Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2023–24 @ MoMA PS1, Queens, N.Y. | Sept. 26, 2024-Feb. 10, 2025
During the construction of its new building, the Studio Museum in Harlem has been partnering with MoMA PS1 to present its annual Artist-in-Residence exhibitions. The latest show presents the work of the museum’s 2023–24 cohort—sonia louise davis (b. 1988), visual artist, writer, and performer; Malcolm Peacock (b. 1994), multidisciplinary artist; and Zoë Pulley (b. 1993), designer and maker. The diverse practices of the three artists are brought together in this exhibition, which is curated by Yelena Keller and Jody Graf, with Adria Gunter.
“Working across sound, textile, and installation, the artists engage methodologies of endurance and wonder to explore themes related to ancestral and intuitive knowledge.”
RALPH LEMON and KEVIN BEASLEY, “Rant (redux),” 2020–24 (4-channel HD video color, 8-channel sound, 14 minutes), Installation view of Ceremonies Out the the Air: Ralph Lemon, on view at MoMA PS1, Nov. 14, 2024-March 24, 2025. | Photo: Steven Paneccasio, Courtesy MoMA PS1
Ceremonies Out of the Air: Ralph Lemon @ MoMA PS1, Queens, N.Y. | Nov. 14, 2024–March 24, 2025
A major exhibition of choreographer and artist Ralph Lemon (b. 1952), this show features more than 60 works made over the past decade. Lemon’s unique work “takes the body as an archive of raw emotion, physical labor, and received histories to challenge the ways we have been taught to see the world.” Drawings, photographs, sculpture, paintings, and video are on view with a program of new collaborative performances. The exhibition is curated by Connie Butler and Thomas Lax, with Kari Rittenbach. CT
BOOKSHELF
“Edges of Ailey” was published on the occasion of the museum exhibition dedicated to the life and legacy of choreographer Alvin Ailey. Also consider “Alvin Ailey,” a picture book for children. “Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy” accompanies the landmark exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum. Presenting an array of essays and new scholarship, the volume “offers a full picture of Greene on her own terms and in her own words―revealing her rich career as a curator, collector, library executive and dynamic New Yorker.” “Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies” documents a major traveling retrospective of the artist. Forthcoming in February, “Elizabeth Catlett” was published to coincide with the retrospective. The fully illustrated catalogs “Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876-Now,” “Ceremonies Out of the Air: Ralph Lemon,” and “Draw Them In, Paint Them Out: Trenton Doyle Hancock Confronts Philip Guston,” document their respective exhibitions. “Daufuskie Island” was first published in 1982. The 25th anniversary edition (2007) features Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe’s photographs of the Gullah Geechee Sea Island with the original foreword by Alex Haley and a new preface by Deborah Willis. “Flow States – La Trienal 2024,” the catalog published to accompany the Latinx contemporary art survey at El Museo del Barrio, is available via the museum’s shop. Documenting the Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial at the Cooper Hewitt Museum, “Making Home: Belonging, Memory, and Utopia in the 21st Century” will be available on March 18.
