When the Studio Museum in Harlem opened in 1986, it occupied a rented attic. Last month it reopened after a seven-year hiatus, this time in a handsome dark concrete and glass building built specifically to house art. Thelma Goldendirector of the museum, recently told us that preparing for this opening has forced her to focus even more than usual on the “space and place” in which the museum is located, which is Harlem, which is both the physical location and the imaginary world that has inspired generations of black artists. She recently joined us to discuss several texts that have shaped her understanding of this special area. Her remarks have been edited and condensed.
Street
Ann Petrie
This is the story of a young black mother, Lutie Johnson, who lives in Harlem in the forties. This is both new and incredibly significant sociological research because it equates struggle and survival with opportunity. Petrie writes such vivid, beautiful prose, but that beauty exists alongside harsh reality.
This novel was very important to me when I was a young man because my father was born in Harlem in 1926 and grew up there, and so the world that this novel describes is the world that he knew. It really brought me to a new level of understanding of him and his life. This was especially true due to the novel's focus on the lives of women. My grandmother raised my father alone in Harlem, and “The Street” helped me understand her.
Another country
James Baldwin
For many “Go say it on the mountainBaldwin's semi-autobiographical novel about the young stepson of a Pentecostal preacher is Baldwin's classic Harlem novel. But for me it's this.
Another Country, published in 1962, tells the story of a group of young, creative, politically active people moving through Greenwich Village, Harlem and France. It's a love story, but it's also a novel filled with ideas of the moment. It speaks to how places shape us. Much of what we understand about one of the characters, Rufus, is defined by Harlem—not just as a geographic place, but as a symbol of black life in general. The book really helped me think about Harlem itself as a character and as a way to bring ideas of modernity and blackness to life.
Jazz
Toni Morrison
As someone whose life has been changed in so many ways by Morrison's work, it's hard to say which of her books is my favorite. They all live in me. But in the twenty-five years that I worked at the Studio Museum and lived and worked in Harlem, her 1992 novel Jazz has earned a special place in my pantheon for its absolutely magnificent portrait of the place.
It's set in the twenties and called Jazz, so we immediately understand its context. The story is about a love triangle, but conveys place and time with incredible richness. This is Harlem, where many black worlds meet, the Harlem of music, culture and politics, barbershops and beauty salons. And all this, of course, is conveyed through the absolute poetry of Morrison's prose.
