Ruben Natal-San Miguel Negesti, Dye sublimation photograph on aluminum white matte finish, 2019; 24 x 24 inches/61 x 61 cm; 13 edition of 3 @ 24 x 24. Image courtesy of the gallery
Claire Oliver Gallery is pleased to present Love Letters for Harlem, an exhibition of photographs by John Pinderhughes, Ruben Natal SanMiguel, Jeffrey Henson Scales and Shawn Walker. Love Letters for Harlem showcases the talents of these four Harlem-based photographers and their work that celebrates the lives and culture of Harlem. A portion of the proceeds from this exhibition will benefit Harlem Community Relief Fund, an initiative of the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce (GHCC), who in concert with Harlem Week, ReThink Food NY, NY State Assemblywoman Inez Dickens, CCNY, NAACP are working together to combat food insecurity in Harlem.
‘At Home’ exhibition at Living with Art Salon with large painting by Giannina Gutierrez behind the red couch, and from the Home Series, a collage by Elan Cadiz near the window
Living with Art Salon opened its doors to three diverse women in the arts, Elan Cadiz, Giannina Gutierrez and Leah Poller. The exhibition, At Home, explores how we live at home, as a family ~ as neighbors, as friends, as lovers ~ looking back on your dad’s favorite chair growing up, waking up in your own bed, working from home in this moment in time, and the emotions connected to the people and places that home ‘is’. Come along on our preview of this thoughtful and timely exhibition.
The Apollo Theater announced details of its spring 2021 season, which will take place exclusively online! The season features a broad range of free and ticketed virtual events, including the Apollo Film series celebration of House Party and House Party 2, cult classics created more than 30 years ago. The virtual program includes performances by Kid ‘N Play, Full force and more. The season expands the nonprofit theater’s road as a partner, commissioner, and co-producer of programming that centers Black artists and voices from the African Diaspora, while tackling important social issues for Harlem, New York and the nation.
On January 26, 1934, the Apollo Theater opened with the show “Jazz a la Carte” headlined by Benny Carter and his Orchestra, Ralph Cooper and Aida Ward. Soon after, The Apollo became the premiere place for the performing arts and entertainment in Harlem.
15 West 124th Street, image taken December 19, 2018. Image credit: AFineLyne
Overlooking Marcus Garvey Park, at 15 West 124th Street, stands an 18,000+ square-foot, brick building that had been the home to the Franciscan Handmaids of the Most Pure Heart of Mary ~ the nation’s oldest order of black nuns. In 2016, the Order celebrated its 100th Anniversary and year of service with a Gala featuring His Eminence Timothy Michael Cardinal Dolan (Archbishop of New York), with performances by Melba Moore and other celebrity guests, held at the New York Academy of Medicine.
NYC Parks Commissioner Mitchell J. Silver, FAICP, joined Assembly member Al Taylor, Manhattan Deputy Borough President Matthew Washington, Community Board 10 Chair Cicely Harris, President & CEO of Harlem Congregations for Community Improvement Malcolm Punter, and community members this week to cut the ribbon on the reconstruction of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson Playground in Central Harlem. The $1.59 million renovation is the 51st project completed through the Community Parks Initiative (CPI), the City’s first-ever parks equity initiative, funded by Mayor Bill de Blasio.
For twenty years, Community Works/New Heritage Theatre Group has celebrated 100 years of Harlem’s cultural history through the harlem is…. public art exhibitions, programming, and school and community partnerships. This month, they announced the launching of the harlem is…website, the new digital home for the harlem is… exhibitions, virtual events, and educational activities devoted to honoring the living legacy of local heroes in the iconic Harlem neighborhood.
Bisa Butler, photograph by Gioncarolo Valentine, courtesy of Claire Oliver Gallery
Claire OliverGallery is pleased to announce a group exhibition Four Now: New Works by Bisa Butler, Adebunmi Gbadebo, Leonardo Benzant and Gio Swaby. The exhibition and a dynamic virtual program of talks and events is designed to telegraph the excitement and energy of Miami Art Week to the gallery’s Harlem headquarters. The program includes a range of conversations between the artists and guest speakers including actor, artist and collector Hill Harper, James Beard Award-winning chef Bryant Terry, Nora Atkinson, the Fleur and Charles Bresler Curator-in-Charge for the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Dr. Tricia Laughlin Bloom, Newark Museum Curator of American Art. The exhibition will be on view by appointment December 1, 2020 – January 9, 2021 and virtual programming can be joined online at the gallery’s website.
Artist Jannie Crimmins (left) surrounded by the etherial creations of Gina Fuentes Walker. Image courtesy of the gallery.
Living with Art Salon opened its doors to its third exhibition ~ Form, Paper Scissors ~ a group show featuring four female artists, each with a unique way of celebrating the art of paper.
Zaq Landsberg, Reclining Liberty. Rendering courtesy of the artist and Connie Lee, Marcus Garvey Park alliance
Update ~ Due to the pandemic, this installation has been moved to March, 2021.
Next month, Harlem’s Morningside Park can expect a Reclining Liberty by artist Zaq Landsberg to be installed at the base of the stairs near 120th Street and Manhattan Avenue. This timely public art installation was proposed Wednesday at Community Board 9 Meeting by Brad Taylor, President, Friends of Morningside Park, and Connie Lee, Curator/Organizer, Public Art Initiative/Living With Art Salon and President, Marcus Garvey Park Alliance.
Adebunmi Gbadebo, installation of True Blue series at the 2020 Dhaka Art Summit. Image courtesy Claire Oliver Gallery
Claire Oliver Gallery announced a reopening of the gallery with a solo exhibition by Adebunmi Gbadebo entitled A Dilemma of Inheritance.
The exhibition will showcase the artist’s True Blue series, which is comprised of more than 45 works that grapple with concepts surrounding heredity and the evolution of memory and forgetting focused on two former slave plantations in South Carolina, both named True Blue.
Maya Angelou’s Harlem homme, 58 West 120th Street in the Mount Morris Historic District of Harlem
On a brisk day in March, 2016, we noticed a realtor’s Open House in a brownstone belonging to poet and civil rights activist, Maya Angelou, who passed away two years before. Balloons were on the sign and the front door was open on the beautifully maintained home, and so we went on in.
Today The Apollo Theater announced details of its fall 2020 season, which will take place exclusively online on the Apollo’s Digital Stage. The season features a broad range of free virtual events, including Wyclef Jean performing his Double Platinum album The Carnival; a special Live Wire conversation focused on the artistry of the Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin; and monthly Apollo music nights with independent musical artists through the Apollo Music Café, featuring artists Stout, J. Hoard, and Madison McFerrin.
One of the most enchanting streets in Harlem is a row of 28 houses on the south side of West 130th Street between Lenox and Fifth Avenues known as Astor Row. Let’s take a stroll back in time.
Kenseth Armstead’s ‘Boulevard of African Monarchs’ in Harlem
NYC DOT Art Community Commission and The Marcus Garvey Park Alliance partnered to install a timely and pertinent new art installation in Harlem. Kenseth Armstead: Boulevard of African Monarchs arrived on 116th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard on August 13, 2020.
On a recent studio visit with Connie Lee (pictured left), Curator/Director of Living with Art Salon and the President of Marcus Garvey Park Alliance and the Public Art Initiative to view The Dream Series by artist (pictured right) Capucine Bourcart
Have you been dreaming more frequently over this past few months? Intense, life like, scary dreams? Whimsical or wonderful dreams? According to several studies, COVID-19, and its affect on our life in general, has increased the trend.
This past June, I visited the Living with Art Salon, who had a most unusual piece in a small side-room, entitled ‘Big Dream‘ by artist Capucine Bourcart. This large-format artwork, hung from the ceiling, gracing the floor. It held a dream in a code known only to the artist, and it was printed ~ line by line ~ with sand collected from all over the world. Oh yes, we wanted to see more. Below is a visit to the artists’ studio to see her entire collection of the Dream Series.
Located across 125th Street from the famed Apollo Theater, Harlem Mart 125 was once a vibrant market for over two-hundred local vendors, with the feel of an indoor, open-air market. Owned by the City of New York, it was developed by government agencies in the mid-1980s to give street vendors an opportunity to have an indoor stall. For many reasons, the Mart closed its doors in 2002 and has remained vacant.
What does an aircraft carrier do when it retires? The Baylander IX-514 on the West 125th Street Harlem Pier, has opened its hatch in a new life as a restaurant on the West Harlem Pier at 125th Street.
View from the front room – Living with Art ‘Pattern Migration’
Living with Art, the uptown salon-style gallery, re-opened with the installation Pattern Migration ~ works by artists Capucine Bourcart and Beatrice Lebreton.
Harlem’s historicNational Black Theatre (NBT) is hosting an annual salute to its founder and CEO emerita, the late Dr. Barbara Ann Teer, with NBT’s Founder’s Month, a month-long celebration of Teer, Black theater and community. Running through July 18, the celebration will feature the launch of NBT@Home: A Letter to the Future, a new series of online conversations on theater, current events and Black history with guests including Toshi Reagon, Ebony Noelle Golden, adrienne maree brown, Jonathan McCrory, Sade Lythcott, members of the theater’s original company of “Liberators,” and more, and the launch of NBT’s VISION Forward Fund Campaign, a fundraising drive to support and advance the theater well into the future.
‘Spirit of Harlem’ by artist Louis Del Sarte on Frederick Douglass Blvd at 125th Street in Harlem
Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, and Cel-Libertation Day, celebrates the Emancipation Proclamation of 1865. It is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the end to slavery in the United States. While much of our City is still under COVID-19 restrictions, our community celebrates in thoughtful walks, marches, and online, virtually. Here are a few ways to celebrate Juneteenth 2020 in New York, beginning with the One Million March.
Black Public Media (BPM) is celebrating 40 years of showing the world that #blacklivesmatter by bringing Black content creators and their stories to the forefront for audiences across all screens.
As the organization takes stock of its four decades-long history, it is releasing the BPM 40 for 40 Media Game Changers, a list recognizing 40 individuals and organizations that, like BPM, have helped keep Black voices and Black stories present in the media and shaped the modern-day landscape of independent, Black film and television.
Kerstin Brätsch: Fossil Psychics for Christa, 2020
Kerstin Braetsch’s most recent works, titled Fossil Psychics for Christa, are brightly-colored, three dimensional stuccos, hovering between the realms of painting and sculpture. Stucco is a form of plaster, historically used to imitate marble and other rare stones. “It’s about extending painting,” Braetsch has explained of what drives her work, “following the logic of my brushstroke but in a different language.” With this material, Braetsch creates “paintings” that appear ancient, like the result of geologic phenomena. Created with the assistance of master artisan Valter Cipriani, they resemble brushstrokes and monsters, regular motifs in Braetsch’s oeuvre. These impossible objects are physically immediate, almost demanding to be touched, as well as deeply mysterious, like fossils transported here from another, less corporeal realm. Step into the Online Viewing Room at Gavin Brown’s enterprise for the exhibition, Kerstin Brätsch: Fossil Psychics for Christa.
The historic Harlem-based theater is resuming its 51st season with the launch of a new initiative called NBT@Home: Uplifting Communal Resilience on Wednesday, April 22, at 5:30 p.m. ET on its Facebook page and Facebook Live. NBT@Home is a new, free five-part weekly digital series that will present curated, hour-long artist discussions on subjects including the arts and health in the Black community and beyond.
Look for NBT@Home on Wednesday, April 29th, May 6th, May 13th, May 20th.
Ki Smith Gallery will not be physically opening its doors to the exhibition, Base 12: Don’t Call It a Comeback due to coronavirus. However the artists in this group exhibition announced that they will participating in the Fight Coronavirus & Artist Aid online auction, organized by Christie’s Corporate Social Responsibility program.
Adapting to changing times, The Apollo Theater will hold auditions for its new season via online submissions.
For the first time in its 86 year history, the Apollo Theater’s Amateur Night auditions will be conducted exclusively through online submissions, for the summer and fall 2020-21 season.
Artists known as BASE 12. Image courtesy Ki Smith Gallery.
How do you engage with a painting hung on the wall of a subway station? On the sidewalks or in our Parks? What happens when an exhibition is staged at one of the most celebrated museums in New York City without the museum’s consent?
Bisa Butler: “Zouave” (detail) quilted and appliquéd cotton, wool and chiffon 88 x 52 inches, 2020. Image courtesy Claire Oliver Gallery
Update ~ In response to the Coronavirus, the Claire Oliver Gallery will show the exhibit by private appointment only until further notice.
Claire Oliver Gallery opens its doors to the debut solo exhibition by artist Bisa Butler: The Storm, the Whirlwind and the Earthquake on view February 29 – April 25, 2020. Butler’s textile portraits of people of color are created from layers of brightly colored fabrics with a multiplicity of meanings. Butler’s composite characters are inspired by historical photography; the resulting images are rendered life-sized with viewers often engaging the subjects eye to eye.
Dates have been set for the annual Harlem Restaurant Week 2020! Dozens of new and exciting restaurants and hot spots have been added to the list this year, including retail and special events.
This February, the world famous Apollo Theater will kick off Black History Month with Apollo Open House: Celebration of Cool on Saturday February 1st from 1 p.m. – 6.p.m., to celebrate and explore the rich history of the Theater as it continues the legacy of Black History.
Judith Schaecter, ‘Murdered Animal, 2018, stained glass lightbox, 28″ x 28″, courtesy of the artist and Claire Oliver Gallery
The much anticipated inaugural exhibition in its new Harlem building, Claire Oliver Gallery will open its doors to Almost Better Angels featuring new works by Judith Schaechter on Saturday, January 18th.
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture will host its Eighth Annual Black Comic Book Festival on January 17 and January 18 from 10 AM to 8 PM. Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, member of the legendary hip hop group Run-DMC and founder of the independent publishing house Darryl Makes Comics, will participate in the panel discussion “Hip Hop and Comics in 3D” with Andre Davis and Dawud Anyabwile on January 18 at 2 PM.
IMAGES: Annina Roescheisen, Stills from Bridging Grey, 2019
Ki Smith Gallery will open its doors to Bridging Grey, a new video and performance installation by German artist Annina Roescheisen. Her readings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe are the basis for this new body of work. In the mid-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these philosophers began to investigate the aesthetics of color. Roescheisen has been most influenced by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose intuitive approach linked the colors we see to the emotion and mood we feel in their presence. In his Theory of Colours, Goethe writes about painting, “From these three, light, shade, and colour, we construct the visible world, and thus, at the same time, make painting possible, an art which has the power of producing on a flat surface a much more perfect visible world than the actual one can be.”
On Saturday, November 30th, Ki Smith Gallery will open its doors to a celebration of the extraordinary life of acclaimed documentary and street photographer Jill Freedman (1939-2019).
Today, the iconic nonprofit Apollo Theaterannounced details of its spring 2020 season featuring genre-spanning performances—from music, dance, and theater to comedy and film screenings—that continue the theater’s strong mission of articulating African American narratives through cultural programming. Season highlights include the Apollo’s Africa Now! and African Film Festival 30th Anniversary Celebration presenting the legendary Oumou Sangaré; Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber performing Isaac Hayes’ Academy Award-winning score Shaft, alongside a screening of the film; the Apollo Salon Series presentation of A Time to Love, a musical theater collaboration with National Black Theatre; and the signature series that brings patrons to the Apollo year-round, Amateur Night at the Apollo, Apollo Music Café, andApollo Comedy Club.Through its programming, educational, and community initiatives, the Apollo continues to advance its commitment to creating a 21st century performing arts canon, providing a home to artists and the community, while tackling important social issues for Harlem, New York, and the nation.
Here it is ~ The exciting Apollo Theater 2020 Spring Season.
Some twenty-five years ago, Commissioner of the New York State Office of General Services, RoAnn Destito, did a walk-through at what is our current State Office Building. The building was in total disarray with no window glass in some of the space. But in the basement she found a treasure-trove of artwork that had been stacked up and left there for several years. It was the work of local artists of that day, names like Barboza, Bey, Catlett, DeCarava, Van Der Zee…….
This work is part of The New York State Harlem Art Collection’s permanent collection, and it will be on view beginning November 15 for the first time since the mid 1990s.
The long-awaited ribbon-cutting for the restoration and unveiling of the historic Harlem Fire Watchtower took place on Saturday, October 26, 2019, to the delight of the entire community. Come along with us as we walk up to the Acropolis and celebrate the watchtower’s return.
“96 in the Shade” Image courtesy of the artist, Al Johnson and X Gallery
X Gallery began as a one-year experiment, with the support and sponsorship of John McGuinness, owner of Harlem Properties on Malcolm X Boulevard (Lenox Avenue). Now in its third year, the gallery will be closing its doors with a final two-day exhibition, works by the renowned artist, Al Johnson.
St Martin’s Episcopal Church, 230 Lenox Avenue in Harlem
Churches in Harlem and East Harlem have been very much in the news, due to declining membership and deteriorating buildings, and numerous sales of these properties. And so, when a reader told us that the historic bells were recently removed from St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Harlem, we were more than curious ~ and delighted to learn that the carillon is on its way to South Carolina for evaluation and restoration. A representative of the Diocese went on to say that their first order of business will be to stabilize the tower and interior space, with scaffolding going up inside the building next week.
Kicking-off the New Year, we checked in with the Diocese, who was eager to share that they are continuing the restoration, with their main focus on restoring the tower, fixing the roof and otherwise making it possible for the congregation to move back in.
Workers on scaffolding, October 22, 2020
We may be in the middle of a pandemic, but the renovation work at St. Martin’s Church continues. Above and below, workers were spotting high on the top scaffolding on Thursday, October 22, 2020.
artist tatyana fazlailzaheh-she is the first public artist in residence at nycchr.
New York City Department of Cultural Affairs announced four new public artists-in-residence (PAIR). We spotted the work of one of them on Lenox Avenue at 125th Street in Harlem.
Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, a Brooklyn-based street artist and painter whose street art project Stop Telling Women to Smile tackles gender-based street harassment. Her work can be found on walls from New York to Paris, Los Angeles to Mexico City, and right here…….
THE NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE’S PLANNED HEADQUARTERS ON 125TH STREET IN HARLEM WILL INCLUDE 170 BELOW-MARKET APARTMENTS, OFFICE SPACE, RETAIL AND THE CITY’S FIRST CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM. IMAGE: BEYER BLINDER BELLE. Image via Commercial Observer.
Harlem knew this was coming. Now an illustration for the National Urban League’s new Headquarters and Civil Rights Museum to be built on 125th Street near Lenox Avenue, bringing the League back home, where it was founded in 1910.
You think it’s hot outside? Check this out ~ Jazzmobile to launch residency at historic Minton’s Playhouse ~ kicking it off with Nat Adderley, Jr. on July 4th. Let’s celebrate!
California Chef Russell Jackson has opened a fine dining restaurant, Reverence Harlem, in the historic Strivers Row District, close to where he has been living, on 138th Street ~ and Reservations are now Live!
Ariel Blackwood dances in 125th & FREEsom. Photo Credit: Garlia C. Jones. Image courtesy NBT
The National Black Theatre(NBT) has been celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2019 with a series of performances throughout the city ~ all year long. Next up ~ June 22nd and June 29th
Faction Art Projects opens its doors to Andrew Thiele: Moral Compass, a four-day solo exhibition of new urban, mixed media collage works. The exhibition of the Harlem-based artist will feature over twenty new large-scale artworks. Throughout the show, there will be a calendar of events including a workshop, a jazz performance and a book signing of Thiele’s newest publication.
Filipe Branquinho, Jorge Macate, Padeiro (Jorge Macate, Baker), 2011. Courtesy the artist.
After the End: Timing Socialism in Contemporary African Artpresents a selection of works engaging with the history of African socialisms. It features artists looking at countries including Angola, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique. The exhibition is the first in North America to explore aesthetic responses to African socialisms and their aftermath.
The much anticipated renovation of Settepani Harlem is complete, with a soft opening that packed the tables. The new concept has all the bells and whistles from their signature breads and gorgeous deserts to salads, pizza and panini’s ~ along with a full bar.
The Annual Mount Morris Park Community Improvement Association (MMPCIA)House Touris set for Sunday, June 9th. This year, the tour’s theme, Harlem Nights, is in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance.
They’re back! Remember the eleven Harlem students who created murals inside the new Shake Shack on 125th Street? Once again, partnering with Creative Art Works, the young artists completed the exterior work on the facade, which includes Fifth Avenue and 125th Street.
In celebration of the completed installation, Creative Art Works invites the Community to an official dedication of the exterior art on Thursday, May 23rd at 4:30pm. In addition, 25% of all proceeds on any purchase at Shake Shack that entire day will be donated to Creative Art Works IF the buyer mentions Creative Art Works (or CAW) at the register.
The artists Ektoras Binikos and Simon Jutras have merged their diverse artistic styles to create a sophisticated new mixology cocktail bar, located on Frederick Douglass Boulevard’s Restaurant Row in Harlem ~ a homage to the Uptown Speakeasies and salons of Harlem’s historic past ~ Sugar Monk.
