The lecture title, “An Emerging Generation of African American Artists,” refers to a group of artists Thelma Golden describes as “post-black.” Golden began to aggressively investigate post-black artists in 2000 when she curated Freestyle, her first acclaimed group exhibition for The Studio Museum in Harlem. The exhibition featured work by 28 emerging African-American artists who did not put race and racial identity in the foreground. Freestyle marked a shift from Golden’s earlier championing of young African-American conceptual artists who were interested in identity politics. In 1994 she curated Black Male, a critically significant and somewhat controversial exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art that focused on the evolution of images of African- American men in the years following the civil rights movement. During her lecture, Golden will also address the cultural issues surrounding the conceptual shift from Black Male to Freestyle.

Thelma Golden became the deputy director of Exhibitions and Programs of The Studio Museum in Harlem in January 2000. Prior to her appointment, she was the special projects curator for Peter and Eileen Norton, contemporary art collectors and philanthropists based in Los Angeles, California. Prior to working with the Nortons, Golden was a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, where she began her career in 1988 as a curatorial assistant.

In addition to her curatorial work, Thelma Golden teaches, lectures, and writes about contemporary art, cultural issues, and the curatorial practice nationally and internationally. She is an adjunct professor at the School of the Arts at Columbia University, and has been a member of the faculty at Yale University and Cornell University. She is a member of the Graduate Committee at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.

SITE Santa Fe’s Art & Culture series is partially supported by Lannan Foundation, LLWW Foundation, Madelin Coit and Alan Levin, Bobbie Foshay-Miller and Chuck Miller, and Marlene Nathan Meyerson.