Organized by curator Connie H. Choi and curatorial assistant Kiki Teshome, “Dreams of This Future: The Collection of Peggy Cooper Cafritz” is on view at the Studio Museum in Harlem through February 28, 2027. Caribbean-rooted artists included in this exhibition include Alexandre Arrechea, Elizabeth Colomba, Gwendolyn C. Knight, Simone Leigh, and William Villalongo [see full list of artists in the description below, and please let us know if we missed someone; Caribbean artists indicated in bold lettering].
Cuban artist Alexandre Arrechea writes, “The exhibition celebrates the extraordinary legacy of Peggy Cooper Cafritz (1947-2018)—a visionary collector, educator, civil rights activist, and tireless champion of artists whose belief in art was inseparable from her commitment to equity, beauty, and cultural transformation.”
Description: This exhibition brings together a selection of works from a historic gift to the Studio Museum in Harlem by Peggy Cooper Cafritz (1947–2018) to celebrate her legacy as an advocate for the arts and her lifelong commitment to artists and their practices. An arts patron, educator, and civil rights activist, Cafritz bequeathed the majority of her art collection to the Studio Museum and the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, a public school in Washington, DC, which she cofounded in 1974. While the Museum has shown dozens of works from this collection in the years since receiving the gift, this exhibition is the first to tell a story of Cafritz as an art collector.
A tireless supporter of the arts, Cafritz built two art collections during her lifetime. The first was largely destroyed in a 2009 fire; the second was amassed in the seven years prior to her death. Both collections spoke to her unyielding commitment to artists of African descent. Voracious in her interests, Cafritz collected across media—with paintings, photographs, sculptures, textiles, and works on paper represented in this exhibition—but with a firm commitment to championing artists from the earliest stages of their careers.
Cafritz described one aspect of her approach to collecting as a “relentless search for beauty,” which “has always been, in part, a political act.” Her bequest to the Museum included over four hundred works by more than two hundred artists of African descent, many of whom had not previously been represented in the Museum’s collection. Although this exhibition contains just a small fraction of this generous gift, it attempts to evince the radical act of equity, beauty, and permanence that Cafritz imparted to the Museum.
Artists in the exhibition include: Nina Chanel Abney, Derrick Adams, Laylah Ali, ruby onyinyechi amanze, Alexandre Arrechea, Radcliffe Bailey, John Bankston, Sanford Biggers, Diedrick Brackens, Nick Cave, Elizabeth Colomba, Gregory Coates, Noah Davis, Emory Douglas, Derek Fordjour, Hassan Hajjaj, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Kay Hassan, Samuel Levi Jones, Titus Kaphar, Gwendolyn C. Knight, Jas Knight, Marcia Kure, Jerome Lagarrigue, Deana Lawson, Simone Leigh, Nate Lewis, Turiya Magadlela, Mustafa Maluka, Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, Jackie Nickerson, Arcmanoro Niles, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Kambui Olujimi, Chinedu Felix Osuchukwu, Jennifer Packer, Deborah Roberts, Rozeal., Tschabalala Self, Alexandria Smith, Stan Squirewell, Devin Troy Strother, Hank Willis Thomas, William Villalongo, and Saya Woolfalk.
Dreams of This Future: The Collection of Peggy Cooper Cafritz is organized by Connie H. Choi, Curator, and Kiki Teshome, Curatorial Assistant. The Studio Museum is grateful to the Cafritz family for their support of this exhibition.
For more information, see https://www.studiomuseum.org/exhibitions/dreams-of-this-future-the-collection-of-peggy-cooper-cafritz
Also see Arrechea’s Mask Series: Havana
[Photo above: Alexandre Arrechea and Peggy Cooper Cafritz at The Armory Show, New York, 2017, taken from https://www.facebook.com/alexandre.arrechea.]