Art brings Harlem to life

NEW HOME: REOPENS ITS DOORS AFTER SEVEN YEARS, AIMS TO REDEFINE BLACK NEIGHBOURHOOD

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As the Studio Museum reopened on Saturday in its gleaming new building, New York's premier institution for black art finds itself looking back and looking forward at the same time.

Colourful signs featuring permanent works have sprouted near the museum's home in Harlem, a centre point in black life and imagination in America for more than a century.

The museum, closed for the more than seven-year project, has commissioned new works to commemorate the reboot, which features expanded studios for the institution's artists-in-residence programme

But the 57-year-old museum is also hearkening back to its roots with a retrospective of the late Tom Lloyd, whose electronically programmed wall sculptures anticipated today's digital age.

Some of the same pieces were hung in the museum's inaugural 1968 show back when works by artists of African descent were mostly absent from New York's leading museums.

Today's art scene is very different.