Exterior View of the Studio Museum in Harlem’s New Building. Courtesy Studio Museum in Harlem. Image © Dror Baldinger FAIA
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https://www.archdaily.com/1035878/the-studio-museum-in-harlem-opens-its-first-purpose-built-home-by-adjaye-associates
The Studio Museum in Harlem is preparing to open its new purpose-built home to the public on November 15 with a Community Day celebration. Designed by Adjaye Associates in collaboration with Cooper Robertson, the seven-story, 82,000-square-foot building is located on West 125th Street in Harlem, New York City. Serving as a major institution dedicated to artists of African descent, the museum‘s new facility marks the first structure in its fifty-seven-year history conceived specifically for its mission. The opening signals a new chapter for the museum‘s engagement with art, education, and the local community through expanded spatial and programmatic capacities.
Exterior View of the Studio Museum in Harlem’s New Building. Courtesy Studio Museum in Harlem. Image © Dror Baldinger FAIAThe new building provides state-of-the-art galleries, flexible public spaces, and educational facilities designed to deepen engagement with visitors of all ages. Exhibition and Artist-in-Residence spaces have more than doubled, allowing for a broader range of programming and the display of larger-scale works. A new Education Workshop and expanded public areas, both indoors and outdoors, create opportunities for learning, participation, and interaction. Together, these elements aim to strengthen the museum‘s role as a cultural and social anchor within Harlem‘s evolving urban landscape.
Interior View of the Studio Museum in Harlem’s New Building, Featuring the Stoop and the Grand Staircase. Courtesy Studio Museum in Harlem. Image © Dror Baldinger FAIAArchitecturally, the project takes inspiration from the forms and rhythms of the surrounding neighborhood. The facade reinterprets the masonry patterns and window compositions of Harlem‘s brownstones and apartment buildings, while a series of glass doors and stepped entryways recall the social stoops that define the area’s streetscape. Inside, a light-filled central stair offers visual connections across floors, encouraging circulation and encounters between visitors. A rooftop terrace, designed by Harlem-based Studio Zewde, provides a landscaped setting with native plantings and panoramic views of Manhattan, conceived as a communal space for reflection and gathering.
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Interior View of the Studio Museum in Harlem’s New Building, Featuring the Stoop and the Lobby . Courtesy Studio Museum in Harlem. Image © Dror Baldinger FAIA
The inaugural program will include several exhibitions that reflect both the museum‘s history and its ongoing dialogue with contemporary practice. Highlights include a major presentation of artist Tom Lloyd’s work exploring art and technology, and From Now: A Collection in Context, a rotating selection from the museum’s permanent collection of nearly nine thousand works spanning two centuries. From the Studio: Fifty-Eight Years of Artists in Residence brings together works by more than one hundred alumni of the museum‘s residency program, while To Be a Place presents archival materials tracing the institution’s evolution within Harlem‘s cultural history.
Tom Lloyd and apprentices, including his son Omar, in the artist’s studio in Jamaica, Queens, c. 1968. Courtesy Studio Museum in Harlem. Image © Reginald McGheeIn other similar news, the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) in Cairo has officially opened to the public, concluding a project more than two decades in the making. In China, Snøhetta has been commissioned to design the Qiantang Bay Art Museum in Hangzhou’s Xiaoshan District, envisioned as a new cultural centerpiece within the expanding Qiantang Bay Future Headquarters development. Meanwhile, in northeastern Germany, construction has commenced on the Museum Ehrhardt in Plüschow, marking the first cultural commission in the country by Kéré Architecture and the firm’s inaugural museum project in Europe.