Whatever their motivations for coming, however they identified, professionally or creatively, those distinctions started to break down. LGB: The cross-fertilization in that little seven-hundred-square-foot space was amazing because every segment of the Black community came in. I have lived with the stories of those legendary openings, which were the meetings of so many worlds and people, not just in the art world, but in music, fashion, film. Can you talk about the exhibition openings at JAM? Because that would allow us to then talk about how you created this space that was different from anything else. TG: You were trying to create a different model separate from the ways the “community”-we put that in quotes-was imagined to engage with art, and in direct response to what Black artists wanted and needed at that time. So engaging folks at JAM who weren’t going into museums was complicated. JAM was on Fifty-Seventh Street, and Black folks didn’t usually come to Fifty-Seventh Street then. I wanted more of them to come into the museum. I was at the Studio Museum, and while it was a vibrant space, especially for artists, people who walked by the museum every day or lived across the street were not coming in. Artist-run organizations such as Tom Lloyd’s Store Front Museum in Queens, WeusiNyumba Ya Sanaa Gallery in Harlem, and Where We At Black Women Artists created opportunities for Black artists to meet and show their work. I identified as a nationalist, but I wasn’t drawn to that aesthetic. Most Black-run art organizations in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens tended to exhibit representational work, which I called “red-green-and-black” or “Black-women-nursingbabies” art because those were common elements. So when I decided JAM was going to show artists based in New York, California, and elsewhere, New York City artists made their objections known. Of course, there were Black artists working throughout the country, notably in Chicago, Boston, and DC, and they were also part of the conversation. What was Black art? Were artists who made nonrepresentational work “Black artists”? And there was a kind of rivalry between artists based on where they lived, between New York and California artists, and a more subtle one between Los Angeles and Bay Area artists. Linda Goode Bryant: In terms of the Black community, there was a fierce debate, between artists making representational art and those making nonrepresentational work, about the definition of Black art. Can you talk a bit about the landscape of that moment? Thelma Golden: When JAM opened, there was a demand to be representational, both from figures in the previous generation, like Romare Bearden, and from the peers of the artists you were showing. Curatorial team, Department of Media and Performance ![]() On the occasion of Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces, we’re sharing this foundational text in full as a downloadable PDF. The catalogue also features rarely seen archival images and ephemera documenting JAM’s prolific programming, announcements, and publications-including Contextures, a primer on Black Conceptual art published in 1978 by Goode Bryant and scholar Marcy S. ![]() In the exclusive excerpt below, they speak about the gallery’s history, Goode Bryant’s personal story, and JAM’s continuing importance today. ![]() The book includes a conversation between JAM’s founder and director, Linda Goode Bryant, and Thelma Golden, the Studio Museum’s director and chief curator. The accompanying catalogue, co-published with The Studio Museum in Harlem, tells this one-of-a-kind story of an attempt to transform the art world’s infrastructure. The exhibition Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces celebrates the landmark influence of Just Above Midtown gallery (JAM) on New York City’s artistic landscape of the 1970s and 1980s-and well beyond.
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