On this past Friday as I ran errands (n the extreme cold), I decided to make one of my many impromtu visits to the Studio Museum in Harlem on 125th Street. I really can't stress enough what a great venue it is and it's sitting their right under our collective Harlem noses. Anyway, inside was a show I have been waiting for featuring the art of an African-American visual art legend BARKLEY L. HENDRICKS.

The show was full of super-sized portraits of beautiful black people from the 70's and 80's, a few landscapes and a whole lotta soul. This is art every person of color can fully appreciate. Paintings of people so real and so cool you will feel like you know them. This makes complete sense, because you DO KNOW THEM. They're your Uncle, cousin, brother and sister. They will remind you of your Aunt, Uncle and parents as you've seen them in snap shots. These paintings are a beautiful and passionately photo-realistic representation of us.

The show runs through March 15, 2009, but don't wait to see it. Catch it soon and then see it again and again. It's like a black family reunion in a museum. I'm going back and you should holla and join for a visit.

BARKLEY L. HENDRICKS: BIRTH OF THE COOL
November 12, 2008–March 15, 2009

Barkley L. Hendricks, Sweet Thang (Lynn Jenkins), 1975, Courtesy Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Courtesy the artist

This fall, The Studio Museum in Harlem will be the second stop for the first career retrospective of renowned African-American painter Barkley L. Hendricks (b. 1945). Hendricks was born in Philadelphia, trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Yale University and now lives and works in New London, Connecticut. He is best known for his life-size portraits of people of color living in urban areas in the 1960s and 70s.

This unparalleled exhibition of Hendricks’s paintings will include work from 1964 to the present. Alongside his iconic portraits, Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool will feature many of Hendricks’s lesser known, older works and his newest pieces, small plein air studies of the Jamaican landscape. This exhibition was organized by the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University and is curated by Trevor Schoonmaker, and will travel to the Santa Monica Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston after it leaves the Studio Museum.

This exhibition is sponsored in part by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art, the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, and the North Carolina Arts Council with funding from the state of North Carolina.

And don't for get about...

TARGET FREE SUNDAYS
Sunday is the day that Harlem truly comes alive, and the day that many make time to visit The Studio Museum in Harlem. To make sure that the Museum is accessible to all, we would like to introduce Target Free Sundays at the Studio Museum, thanks to generous support from Target. The program, which will offer free Museum admission every Sunday between 12 and 6 PM, reflects a shared commitment to engage the community and offer a vital cultural experience to all.
In addition to free Museum admission on Sundays, the Education and Public Programs Department has organized free programs and events geared to all our different audiences. From hands-on family workshops to theater performances, whatever their age or interest, visitors will find something to love at Target Free Sundays at the Studio Museum. Join us, as we explore how art and visual communication can ignite the imagination, engage the mind and reflect our human experience-past, present and future.