“I made the exhibition [Black Male]… and I hoped that it would open up a conversation, not simply about what the exhibition was about… but even open up the space of what it means to make exhibitions about race, about identity, about culture and history, and what that means in museums.” —Thelma Golden
Continuing our Black History Month look at the Studio Museum in Harlem, today we have this 2017 video from CUNY TV’s Black America series, hosted by Emmy award–winning journalist Carol Jenkins, interviewing the great Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum. The interview covers a broad array of topics, from Golden deciding at age 12 that she wanted to be a curator, to a discussion of the controversy surrounding Golden’s groundbreaking Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in American Art exhibition at the Whitney in 1994-1995, to her long relationship with the Studio Museum in Harlem.