Thelma Golden: The Curator Is Present
Thelma Golden is not the kind of curator who just hangs art — she uses it to help us see the world in new ways. As a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and now as the chief curator and director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, Golden has had a prominent role in the presentation of African-American art over the past two decades.
Golden grew up with Harlem in her blood. Her grandparents came to the neighborhood from Jamaica in the early 20th century. Although Golden grew up in a different borough, her father made sure they drove through Harlem every time they came into Manhattan.
Golden’s love of art started young. “My parents were deeply invested in African-American culture — they loved music, they loved the theater, they loved literature,” she tells guest host Hilton Als. But it wasn’t just high culture that shaped her ideas about art. “When I think of the influence that stands with me, it was Roxie Roker’s portrayal of Helen Willis on The Jeffersons.”
Once she was allowed her to take the subway by herself, she was drawn to museums, “picking up every free brochure, buying postcards in the gift shop, reading wall labels.” But it wasn’t until she came across a New York Times article about Lowery Stokes Sims, then curator of 20th century art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, that she found her calling. “I was then was able to fully understand that there was someone who made those choices, who put those things on the walls,” Golden tells Als. “That’s when I decided that I wanted to be a curator.”
She started as an intern at the Studio Museum in Harlem, then moved up to curator, and, in 1991, was hired by David Ross at the Whitney, where she was the first black curator. “I felt an incredible amount of responsibility,” she says. “I walked in that door every day with the sense of what it meant.”
In 1994, Golden organized a show at the Whitney called Black Male: Representations of Black Masculinity in Contemporary Art. Coming as it did after the Rodney King beating and LA riots, OJ Simpson’s trial, and Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings, the exhibit touched a nerve with the public and influenced the discussion of race in the art world. And it made Golden’s reputation in curatorial circles. She credits Ross’s encouragement, as well as that of the artists she worked with, for the strength of the show. “I was raised as a curator by a fierce group of artists who really demanded that I understand what their work was about.” Seven years later, her exhibition of young African-American artists Freestyle at the Studio Museum turned out to be just as influential. Golden is now chief curator and director of the Studio Museum, a Harlem institution that has been presenting artists of color for nearly 50 years.
When her career began, exhibitions of work by black artists were scarce enough that each one felt, to Golden, like it carried a burden of representing the state of African-American art. That’s changed, and Golden has had a big part in the growing diversity of black artists on view in high-profile institutions. While she’s proud of how far museums have come in representing artists of color, Golden says, “I will be the first one to say that I still want more.”
