ABDEBUNMI GBADEBO EXHIBITION AT CLAIRE OLIVER

Harlem Bespoke: The Claire Oliver Gallery at 2288 Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard by West 135th Street moved uptown after being in the West Chelsea gallery district for over 17 years and has since launched the careers of many new contemporary black artists.

LAST CHANCE: NEW YORK, NEW MUSIC 1980-1986

New York, New Music 1980-1986 exhibit at Museum of the City of New York, 104th Street and Fifth Avenue. During the early 1980s, New York experienced a community-driven musical renaissance. The result was an era of creativity and genre-defying performance that stands as one of the most influential in musical and cultural history.

LAST CHANCE: RAPHAEL MONTANEZ ORTIZ AT EL MUSEO

Harlem Bespoke: Raphael Montañez Ortiz: A Contextual Retrospective, the first large-scale exhibition since 1988 dedicated to the artist, activist, educator, and founder of El Museo del Barrio. Curated by El Museo’s chief curator, Rodrigo Moura, and guest curator Julieta González, the exhibition spans several decades of his production, from the 1950s to the early-2020s, in different media such as film, painting, photography, video installations, documents, and assemblages. This is the largest exhibition-to-date dedicated to the artist.

LAST CHANCE: GOATS AT RIVERSIDE PARK 2022

Harlem Bespoke: The goats have spent a summer at Riverside Park and West 120th Street on the upper level but now have to say goodbye.

LISTEN: HARLEM MEER PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL 2022

The Harlem Meer Performance Festival is back for its 29th year! A community fixture since the opening of the Charles A. Dana Discovery Center in 1993, the annual Performance Festival brings the best local talent to Central Park.

LAST CHANCE: FUTURE PERFECT AT CLAIRE OLIVER

Harlem Bespoke: The Claire Oliver Gallery at 2288 Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard by West 135th Street moved uptown after being in the West Chelsea gallery district for over 17 years and has since launched the careers of many new contemporary black artists.

LAST CHANCE: LIBERTY AT MORNINGSIDE PARK

Harlem Bespoke:  The reclining Liberty statue made quite a stir when the giant sculpture debuted within Morningside park by West 120th Street last spring but all good things must apparently come to an end.

SEE: NUESTRA CASA AT HISPANIC SOCIETY MUSEUM

Nuestera Casa Exhibit, Thursday to Sunday, 12:00-6:00pm, FREE admission, at the Hispanic Society, 155th and Broadway. Nuestra Casa: Rediscovering the Treasures of the Hispanic Society Museum & Library, revealing a number of hidden gems from the expansive, permanent collections of the museum that comprise more than 750,000 objects.

LAST CHANCE: HISTORY NOW AT MORRIS-JUMEL

History Now exhibit,  Photo archives of Rose Deler on view January 13th, 2022 - April 3rd, 2022, at Morris-Jumel Mansion, 65 Jumel Terrace betweend 160th and 161st Street. The Morris-Jumel Mansion opens a new exhibition, History Now, by Washington Heights artist, Rose Deler, featuring a selection of large-format, black and white film portraits depicting the residents and architecture of one of New York's most historic - and unexplored - neighborhoods, the Jumel Historic District in Washington Heights.

LAST CHANCE: A BLACK MATRIARCHAL PRINT EXHIBIT

A Contemporary Black Matriarchal Lineage in Printmaking exhibition, January 29th to March 19th at Claire Oliver Gallery, 2288 Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard by West 135th Street.

LAST CHANCE: EN FOCO AT EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO

Last day February 27th, 2022, En Foco: The New York Puerto Rican Experience 1973-1974, at El Museo, 1230 Fifth Avenue by 104th Street. The exhibition centers on a single portfolio of 79 photographs by founding members of the Bronx-based collective, Charles Biasiny-Rivera, Roger Cabán, and Felipe Dante, who each focus on the themes of Education, Small Business, and Labor. The images offer a rich visual testament of New York’s Puerto Rican population, with community members photographing their own lived reality. Donated to El Museo del Barrio by En Foco in 1976, this exhibition marks the first time the portfolio is exhibited in full since 1979.   More details and tickets on the El Museo site: LINK

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LAST CHANCE: EN FOCO AT EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO

November 12th to February 22nd, 2022, En Foco: The New York Puerto Rican Experience 1973-1974, at El Museo, 1230 Fifth Avenue by 104th Street. The exhibition centers on a single portfolio of 79 photographs by founding members of the Bronx-based collective, Charles Biasiny-Rivera, Roger Cabán, and Felipe Dante, who each focus on the themes of Education, Small Business, and Labor. The images offer a rich visual testament of New York’s Puerto Rican population, with community members photographing their own lived reality. Donated to El Museo del Barrio by En Foco in 1976, this exhibition marks the first time the portfolio is exhibited in full since 1979.   More details and tickets on the El Museo site: LINK

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LOTTERY: AFFORDABLE RENTALS AT VICTORIA TOWER

Harlem Bespoke:  The back part of the Victoria Tower facing 126th Street by Frederick Douglass boulevard has a total of 102 mix-income units available and the city lottery applications have just gone live as of this week. 

LAST CHANCE: SUBVERSION & THE ART OF SLAVERY

Closing January 15th, 2022,  Subversion & The Art of Slavery at the Schomburg, 515 Lenox at the corner of 135th Street.  Art denotes strategy, ingenuity, and imagination. While slaveholders and vigilantes threatened and attempted to control Black bodily autonomy in various ways across the Atlantic world, enslaved people and their allies artfully countered this malevolence via everyday and more formally coordinated kinds of resistance. With a principal focus on American and British efforts, this exhibition highlights how slavery abolitionists used a diversity of art, including rebellion, speeches and pamphlets, novels, slave narratives, newspapers, poetry, music, and the visual arts, to agitate for enslaved peoples’ right to liberty and equality.  More details on public weekend hours on the official Schomburg site: LINK

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LAST CHANCE: AGHDRA AT GAVIN BROWN 2021

Extended through December 19th, 2021, AGHDRA by Arthur Jafa Exhibit at Gavin Brown Galleries, 439 West 127th Street by Amsterdam Avenue, Wednesdays-Sundays, 12:00PM-8:00PM.  The Harlem location of Gavin Brown in Manhattanville shuttered last summer but one final show has made it on the radar for the end of 2021.  AGHDRA by Arthur Jafa needed the big interior of the old brewery building for the massive moving images on a stubstantial movie screen and fortunately the gallery still was on the lease.

LAST CHANCE: TRAVELING WHILE BLACK EXHIBIT 2021

Harlem Bespoke: Last chance to see the current exhibit at the Schomburge which will run only until December 11th.  NYC Libraries have reopened and the Traveling While Black exhibit can now be viewed at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in person with no reservations required for walk in viewings on Monday-Saturday.  Moving from the Great Migration of African Americans north and west at the start of the twentieth century to the restrictions and resistances of travel in the Jim Crow South and the Jane Crow North, Traveling While Black examines a history of travel, from those who found themselves exiles within their own country down to the pilgrims and pleasure seekers of our time.   More at the official Schomburg site: LINK

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SHOP: THE UPTOWN NIGHT MARKET IN NOVEMBER

Thursday, November 11th, 4:00PM-10:00PM, Uptown Night Market, 12th Avenue just north of 133rd Street.  The Uptown Night Market returns for the final run of the season in November.  Several dozen food vendors will line the avenue just north of the viaduct and sell a variety of offerings late into the evening hours.  Check out our past post for a sneak peek of the event from the previous month: LINK

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LAST CHANCE: THE WAY WE REMEMBER EXHIBIT

Closing November 13th, The Way We Remember exhibit at the Wallach galleries, 615 West 125th Street, west of Broadway. The Way We Remember: Fritz Koenig’s Sphere, the Trauma of 9/11 and the Politics of Memory highlights three distinct but interrelated themes: it examines the memory of 9/11 through the lens of one of its earliest memorials, namely the modernist sculptor Fritz Koenig’s Sphere for the World Trade Center and its afterlife, explores Columbia University’s Morningside Campus as a “place of memory” and the long history of the community’s interactions with its physical monuments and memorials, and showcases the present struggle to grasp, visualize, and commemorate the enormous impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Free RSVP admission and open to the vaccinated public from Wednesday through Saturday:  LINK

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LAST CHANCE: BAYLANDER END OF SEASON 2021

Harlem Bespoke:  The Baylander at the West Harlem Piers on far west 125th Street is wrapping up a second successful season on Sunday, November 14th so get those drinks while you still can.   There are two levels to enjoy with outside picnic table seating and reservations are highly recommended since the hours are also limited in the next two weeks.  Check out the official website and book a table for one last goodbye to the warm weather.   More on the Baylander Steel Beach can be found in our past post: LINK

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LAST CHANCE: HARLEM FASHION MUSEUM EXHIBIT

UPDATE: September 9th-30th,  10:30AM-5:30PM, Showing Out: Fashion in Harlem, at the Schomburg,  Lenox Avenue at 135th Street. Showing Out: Fashion in Harlem is a pop-up exhibition in celebration of the 55th anniversary of the legacy of the Harlem Institute of Fashion.  Harlem's Black Fashion Museum and Harlem Fashion Institute was started up within a couple of brownstone on West 126th Street just east of 7th Avenue by Lois K. Alexander-Lane from 1966 until 1994. The live event this month sold out but the pop-up exhibit will be open to the public and now has been extended until the end of the month: LINK

HarlemBespoke.com 2021