Studio Museum in Harlem Announces Fall 2026 Season, Concluding Inaugural Year With Highlights From Its Unparalelled Permanent Collection and Showcase of Works from the 2026 Artists in Residence

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HARLEM, NEW YORK, NY, THURSDAY, JULY 23, 2026 — The Studio Museum in Harlem today announced the fall exhibitions that will close its inaugural year of programming, all of which builds upon the Museum’s ongoing commitment to showcasing a vast selection of works from its celebrated permanent collection, which today represents more than eight hundred artists. This objective, made possible because of the institution’s new 82,000-square-foot home that provides state-of-the-art galleries, commenced last November with From Now: A Collection in Context, a dynamic presentation of over three-hundred collection works. From Now was augmented by the publication Meaning Matter Memory: Selections from the Studio Museum in Harlem Collection, which highlights works by more than 260 artists.

For the fall season, the Museum maintains its commitment to displaying its collection with Dreams of This Future: The Collection of Peggy Cooper Cafritz, an ambitious exhibition of works bequeathed to the Museum by the legendary arts patron, educator, and civil rights activist Peggy Cooper Cafritz. In 2018 Cafritz gifted more than four hundred objects from her unparalleled personal collection to the Studio Museum, bolstering the Museum’s collection to what it is today. Opening in September, Geometries will feature a selection of works that center geometry as a point of artistic inquiry. The institution’s annual Artist-in-Residence exhibition returns to the Museum’s building for the first time in eight years, having been presented off-site at MoMA PS1 while the Studio Museum’s new home was under construction. Opening in October, A sustained becoming: Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2026 extends the institution’s legacy of supporting early-career artists and includes new works by Derriann Pharr, Simonette Quamina, and Taylor Simmons. The 2026 cohort is the first to create work out of the institution’s new J. Bruce Llewellyn Artist in Residence Center, a dedicated space for the Museum’s signature Artist-in-Residence program, which, since its founding, has championed the work of over 150 artists of African and Afro-Latinx descent, including some of the most celebrated artists working today.

Additional details on the Museum’s upcoming exhibitions and public programs will be announced in the coming months.

Thelma Golden, Ford Foundation Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, said, “In our first year of reopening, we wanted to make certain that our visitors could enjoy the many remarkable works in our collection. I am therefore delighted to share that by this year’s end nearly five hundred works from our collection will have been on view. We also wanted to recognize those who have entrusted us to steward their legacies by making our collection’s growth possible. Dreams of This Future celebrates the incomparable late Peggy Cooper Cafritz, who had a vision for a world abounding with Black art. In 2018 we were honored to be gifted hundreds of works from Cafritz by emerging and established artists of African descent alike. In Geometries, we look to the artists whose deft understanding of shape and form has resulted in imaginative forms of creative expression. We are also delighted to welcome our annual culminating Artist-in-Residence exhibition back into the Museum with new works by Derriann Pharr, Simonette Quamina, and Taylor Simmons.”

Upcoming Exhibitions and Presentations
Dreams of This Future: The Collection of Peggy Cooper Cafritz
August 19, 2026–February 28, 2027

This exhibition brings together a selection of works from an historic 2018 gift to the Studio Museum in Harlem by Peggy Cooper Cafritz (1947–2018) to celebrate her legacy as an advocate for the arts and her lifelong commitment to artists and their practices. An arts patron, educator, and civil rights activist, Cafritz bequeathed the majority of her art collection to the Studio Museum and the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, a public school in Washington, DC, which she cofounded in 1974.

The gift to the Studio Museum encompasses a multigenerational range of artists of African descent and features many alumni of the Museum’s signature Artist-in-Residence program or those who have had work exhibited at the Museum—demonstrating the shared commitment of Cafritz and the Museum to supporting Black artists throughout their careers. Artists in the exhibition include: Nina Chanel Abney, John Bankston, Sanford Biggers, Diedrick Brackens, Nick Cave, Elizabeth Colomba, Noah Davis, Emory Douglas, Derek Fordjour, Hassan Hajjaj, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Titus Kaphar, Deana Lawson, Simone Leigh, Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, Jackie Nickerson, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Kambui Olujimi, Jennifer Packer, Deborah Roberts, Tschabalala Self, Devin Troy Strother, William Villalongo, and Saya Woolfalk.

Dreams of This Future is organized by Connie H. Choi, Curator, and Kiki Teshome, Curatorial Assistant. The Studio Museum is grateful to the Cafritz family for their support of this exhibition.

Geometries
September 10, 2026–January 31, 2027

Whether conjuring figures from elemental building blocks or destabilizing perception with abstract compositions, the artists in this exhibition make use of geometry as an organizational logic for the images they create. They translate the breadth of the study—grid-like city maps, West African textiles, patterned flowerheads, and sonic vibrations—into a shared visual vocabulary. Through that common language, artists impart meaning onto material, opening new interpretive avenues for viewers in turn. Artists in the exhibition include: Julie Mehretu, Alma Thomas, Jack Whitten, and William T. Williams, among many others.

Geometries is organized by Thelma Golden, Ford Foundation Director and Chief Curator, and Simon Ghebreyesus, Curatorial Assistant.

A sustained becoming: Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2026
October 1, 2026–January 3, 2027

A sustained becoming: Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2026 showcases the work of the Studio Museum in Harlem’s 2026 artists in residence, Derriann Pharr, Simonette Quamina, and Taylor Simmons, the first Artist-in-Residence cohort in the Museum’s new building. Each artist’s practice demonstrates a distinct approach to figuration, with Pharr, Quamina, and Simmons working across painting, collage, printmaking, drawing, sculpture, and mixed media. Real and otherworldly images coalesce to reveal familiar and new narratives, gesturing to the experience of remembering or dreaming. Grounded in cultural memory, the works in this exhibition create momentary suspensions in time to imagine what has already transpired and what is yet to come.

A sustained becoming: Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2026 is organized by Adria Gunter, Assistant Curator. Exhibition support provided by Cam McEwen, Studio Museum/MoMA Curatorial Fellow.

On View
To Be a Place
Ongoing

To Be a Place celebrates the Studio Museum in Harlem’s nearly sixty-year history through a visual timeline of historical documents, media, and programming ephemera that lays out a concise and detailed narrative of the Museum, from its former building on Fifth Avenue to its current spot on 125th Street. This installation offers visitors an opportunity to discover the host of exhibitions, events, and programs that have defined the institution, and the communities with which it has engaged throughout six decades of cultural, political, and societal change.

To Be a Place is organized by Habiba Hopson, former Senior Curatorial Assistant. Exhibition research is provided by Abigail Gordon, Studio Museum/MoMA Curatorial Fellow.

Fade
On view until September 6, 2026

Working amid a turbulent era in US history shaped by widespread social and political change, the seventeen artists in Fade embrace spirituality, surrealism, and nonlinear conceptions of time to locate spaces of possibility.

Many of the artists gathered here make work informed by a relationship to place, drawing on ancestral lineages and collective stories, and tracing continuities between past and present. Some engage the built environment—architecture, infrastructure, and the land—as a repository for memories. Others center a relationship to the body and spirit, using materials and installation methods that register a presence.

Fade is the sixth edition of the “F” shows, a series of group exhibitions that began in 2001 with Freestyle, a landmark in defining contemporary Black art. Artists in Fade include Turiya Adkins, Harlan Bozeman, Kiah Celeste, Antonio Darden, Emmanuel Louisnord Desir, Jesús Hilario-Reyes, Y. Malik Jalal, Lola Ayisha Ogbara, Andina Marie Osorio, Utē Petit, Taj Poscé, Amina Ross, Coumba Samba, Shani Strand, Malaika Temba, Chiffon Thomas, and London Pierre Williams.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue, designed by Caroline Washington and published by the Studio Museum in Harlem. Scheduled for publication in August, the Fade catalogue will include a roundtable discussion with the exhibition curators and commissioned essays on each artist, written by Chenoa Baker, Daniella Brito, Ryan C. Clarke, Akili Z. Davis, Destinee Filmore, Simon Ghebreyesus, Josie R. Hodson, Taylor Jasper, Shameekia Shantel Johnson, Gervais Marsh, Tayler Montague, Amandine Nana, Ade Omotosho, Nzinga Simmons, Diallo Simon-Ponte, LaCharles Ward, and Natalie Willis Whylly. Fade will be available for purchase online and in-person at Studio Store.

Fade is organized by Adria Gunter, Assistant Curator; Yelena Keller, Associate Curator; Jayson Overby Jr., Assistant Curator; Kiki Teshome, Curatorial Assistant; and Habiba Hopson, former Senior Curatorial Assistant. Exhibition support provided by Maya Davis, Abigail Gordon, Cam McEwen, and Taylor Ndiaye, Studio Museum/MoMA Curatorial Fellows; and Maria Wilson, Robert Rauschenberg Curatorial Fellow.

Through Motion and Repose: Expanding the Walls 2026
On view until January 31, 2027

Through Motion and Repose: Expanding the Walls 2026 features photography by the seventeen artists in this year’s cohort of the Studio Museum in Harlem’s signature teen program, Expanding the Walls: Making Connections Between Photography, History, and Community.

The artists capture both vibrant scenes on the streets of New York City and personal, intimate moments within the home. Seen together, the images in this exhibition record motion and repose, fundamental elements to the artists’ experiences as young people growing up in New York.

Through Motion and Repose features work by Agnes Baidoo, Angel Torres, Christopher Soriano, Fairooz Ahamed, Isabella Amankwa-Jones, Ismael Parache Henry, Janelly Rosendo, Jony Pineda Feliz, Jordyn Vargas, Keyaris Canty, Lalah Harper, Nathaly Lopez Alvarez, Nyasia Massey, Rijika Chowdhury, Stephanie Muñoz, Valentina Megraw, and Yoselyn Lucero.

Through Motion and Repose: Expanding the Walls 2026 is organized by Cam McEwen and Taylor Ndiaye, MoMA/Studio Museum in Harlem Curatorial Fellows; Maria Wilson, Robert Rauschenberg Curatorial Fellow; and the Expanding the Walls 2026 participants. Exhibition support provided by Jayson Overby Jr., Assistant Curator; with Ally Caple, former Expanding the Walls Coordinator; and Alexandra Nelson, School and Educator Coordinator.

Camille Norment: Untitled (heliotrope)
Ongoing

Camille Norment: Untitled (heliotrope) is a site-informed sculptural and sound installation by the Norway-based interdisciplinary artist Camille Norment. Commissioned by the Studio Museum in Harlem for its terrace staircase, Untitled (heliotrope) is inspired by contemporary and historical migration. Handwoven by the artist herself, brass wires frame brass tubes of varying lengths and diameters, with the resulting shape recalling a pipe organ and a raft.

Camille Norment: Untitled (heliotrope) is organized by Habiba Hopson, former Senior Curatorial Assistant.

Christopher Myers: Harlem Is a Myth
Ongoing

Christopher Myers: Harlem Is a Myth is a site-specific installation in the Museum’s Education Workshops that depicts an intergenerational community of mythic beings, including iconic figures from Harlem. Myers transforms a young Kareem Abdul-Jabbar into a basketball-carrying centaur, jazz legends Thelonious Monk and Count Basie sprout butterfly and angel wings, and two girls strike poses with antlers and a tail.

Christopher Myers: Harlem Is a Myth is organized by Adria Gunter, Assistant Curator.

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

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

Ongoing Programs
Every Sunday

Enjoy free admission to the Studio Museum every Sunday, from 11:00 am until 6:00 pm, with Studio Sundays, a day of programs designed for visitors of all ages, including children and their families. In addition to viewing the exhibitions, visitors can enjoy talks, tours, art-making workshops, storytime, and family gallery tours. Though admission is free, tickets are required.

Every Third Wednesday of the Month
Lil’ Studio, held every third Wednesday of the month from 10:00 to 11:00 am, is a free early childhood program that engages children and their adult(s) in reading, singing, movement, and art making to build social, emotional, cognitive, physical, and language development. Parents, caregivers, and organizations caring for little ones under five years old are invited to enjoy activities that encourage creative time and bonding. Preregistration is required.

Teen Studio, held every third Wednesday of the month from 4:00 to 6:00 pm, is a free drop-in art-making program for teens aged fourteen to eighteen. Participants build community, learn collaboratively, and create together through projects centered on art and artists of African descent. No prior art experience is required, and snacks and supplies are provided. Preregistration is required.


Funding Credits
The Studio Museum in Harlem’s Artist-in-Residence program is funded by the Glenstone Foundation. Additional support for the Artist-in-Residence program provided by The American Express Kenneth and Kathryn Chenault Sponsorship Fund; Joy of Giving Something; Jerome Foundation; and by endowments established by the Andrea Frank Foundation; the Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Trust; and Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Bank of America is the Studio Museum in Harlem’s lead opening and inaugural exhibitions sponsor. Major support for the inaugural exhibitions and publications provided by the Henry Luce Foundation. Additional support provided by the Holly Peterson Foundation.

Support for Fade is provided by the Alice L. Walton Foundation Exhibitions Endowment; Bob and Jane Clark; and the Charina Endowment Fund.

Camille Norment: Untitled (heliotrope) is supported by funds from the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Acquisition Committee; Miyoung Lee and Neil Simpkins; Dawanna Williams Wedderburn; and the Norwegian Consulate General in New York.

Christopher Myers: Harlem Is a Myth is supported by funds from the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Acquisition Committee and Miyoung Lee and Neil Simpkins.

Expanding the Walls is made possible with support from the Keith Haring Foundation Education Fund; Joy of Giving Something; J.Crew; The KHR McNeely Family Foundation, Kevin, Rosemary, and Hannah Rose McNeely; Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation; William Talbott Hillman Foundation; Hearst Endowment Fund; and by the Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Trust. The Studio Museum is deeply grateful for Donna Van Der Zee’s continued support of this program.

Generous support for Studio Sundays provided by Art Bridges.

Major support for the Studio Museum in Harlem's Learning & Engagement programs provided by the Thompson Foundation Education Fund and the Alice L. Walton Foundation Education and Engagement Endowment.

Additional funding provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.


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, 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]

Sara Ory
Polskin Arts
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