What is art anyway? And what's behind hierarchies within the art world?
A self-declared laboratory for experimentation, Just Above Midtown (JAM) was an art gallery running from 1974 until 1986 where Black art flourished—and it encouraged artists and visitors to ask those very questions. "Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces," a new exhibit at MoMA will commemorate the history of the gallery as a hub for conceptual art, abstraction, performance, and video.
Linda Goode Bryant started JAM in 1974, when she was a 25-year-old arts educator and mother of two, to, in her words, “present African-American artists on the same platform with other established artists.”
The MoMA show will presents artists and artworks previously shown at JAM through archival photos, videos, and other contextual historical material, along with performances, film screenings, public programs, and an exhibition catalogue co-published with The Studio Museum in Harlem.
Just Above Midtown runs at MoMA from October 9, 2022 through February 18, 2023.
