An unusual architectural ensemble now meets the flâneur at the central intersection of Harlem, the African Square. On the north side of the square stands the brutalist behemoth of the New York City administration from the 1970s, named after the legendary Black senator Adam Clayton Powell. Diagonally opposite lies the Art Deco high-rise of the once-glamorous Theresa Hotel, where luminaries from Muhammad Ali to Fidel Castro to Jimi Hendrix have stayed. A plaque in the sidewalk in front commemorates Nelson Mandela’s 1990 visit to the “Capital of Black America.”
On the other side of A. C. Powell Boulevard, a newly eclectic trio of buildings has recently been admired, reflecting the place’s fractured character: at the corner a faceless glass cube for the service center of a mobile phone provider, a little farther one of the richly ornamented warehouses from the late 19th century, and in between rises like a dark fortress the newly opened Studio Museum of Harlem by the British-Ghanaian architect David Adjaye, all in black concrete.
The heaviness of the building, which the architecture critic of the New York Times, Michael Kimmelman, described as “muscular,” at first glance contradicts the museum’s claim to open itself completely to the neighborhood and to be a part of Harlem. That the façade, often fractured and labyrinthine, reads like “an essay on Blackness,” as Kimmelman writes, seems rather abstract. And whether Adjaye’s trick works to relocate the typical staircases of Harlem’s row houses—often the center of the neighborhood’s social life—into the interior of the building?
With the museum, Adjaye cements his reputation as the most prominent Black architect, who has not only planned important cultural institutions such as the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., but also lends the African diaspora its own architectural language. His renown, however, suffered a heavy blow when in 2023 accusations of sexual harassment against him were brought forward. He also had to resign early from his work on the Studio Museum.
Modest Beginnings
The architecture of the $160 million building continues to bear Adjaye’s signature. And it is a statement: the building stands out. For despite its modest beginnings, the Studio Museum has become a globally significant institution for the culture of the African diaspora.
When it opened in 1968 in a loft above a liquor store near the current site, it was meant to give Black American artists who were dramatically underrepresented in traditional institutions a space to work and exhibit, ideally close to the people of the neighborhood. Collecting was not part of the museum’s mission at the time. Today, the Studio Museum owns more than 9,000 works by Black artists, with big names such as Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Kehinde Wiley. The value of its collection is estimated at $300 million.
It is clear that today’s institution must play a different role than the old Studio Museum. Not only has the museum grown substantially, but its context has changed as well: Harlem has changed, New York has changed, and the American cultural landscape has changed.
The United States were at the height of the civil rights movement in 1968; Martin Luther King had just been assassinated; Harlem had experienced the worst unrest in its history. At the same time, twenty-one members of the Black Panthers stood trial in New York. In the Studio Museum and on the streets of the neighborhood, there was a struggle to find Black consciousness, a Black language. Meanwhile, the neighborhood itself was neglected and decaying.
The Studio Museum could become a pilgrimage site for seekers of coolness
By 2025, American culture had gone through five turbulent years. After George Floyd’s murder in 2020, American art institutions stumbled over themselves to do what the Studio Museum has always done: show, promote, and collect Black art. Then Trump returned to power and pressured art institutions to roll back their inclusion efforts. Black Harlem, meanwhile, is being overwhelmed by a wave of gentrification.
A Cross-Section of What Black Art Should Be
Director Thelma Golden still sees her museum in these times as a rock of stability: “The museum should be what it has always been – a space that boldly and radically defines itself through the voices and visions of Black artists.” Thus, the opening exhibition in the labyrinthine, multidimensional galleries of the Adjaye Building presents an impressive cross-section of what Black art has been able to be for 200 years—from early 19th-century portraits to the performance art of David Hammons.
What role Black art can play in a changing political and cultural context remains as unclear as the role the museum will play in New York. Thelma Golden wants it to be a place that inspires hope, where engagement with complex ideas is possible. Her aim, however, is endangered not only by hostile politics in Washington, but more by the fact that Black art remains fashionable despite Donald Trump; the Studio Museum could become a pilgrimage site for seekers of coolness.
Then, with its star-architected building, the museum would inevitably push Harlem’s uplift forward. At the same time, as an established institution, it is already, like other New York museums, a pawn in a web of finance and politics. It is a complicated terrain for Thelma Golden to navigate.
