Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC Studios in SoHo. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm really grateful you're here. On today's show, the new off-Broadway play, In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot, posits a dystopian future in which everyone works in a warehouse and constantly has to move to higher ground to avoid rising sea levels. We'll speak with the playwright and actors. We'll wrap up our full bio conversation on the life of John Lewis with author David Greenberg. And we'll hear about the Met Museum's American Wing, which, like WNYC, is celebrating its 100th birthday this year.

That's the plan, so let's get this started with Studio Museum director, Thelma Golden. The WNYC centennial is having a great year. We've had concerts, a live radio broadcast from Central Park, and an upcoming dance party on November 19th hosted by New York Nico and featuring DJ Talib Kweli. If you'd like tickets to the event, go to wnyc.org/event and we, here at All Of It, are celebrating WNYC with a year-long project to identify 100 pieces of art you should see in New York. Each month, we'll talk to an expert in the field who will give us their 10 picks.

We've had Will Heinrich from The New York Times, Sarah Douglas from ARTnews, Jerry Saltz from New York Mag, Hrag Vartanian from Hyperallergic, and today, my guest is the director and curator in chief of the Studio Museum in Harlem, Thelma Golden. Welcome to the studio.

Thelma Golden: Thank you, Alison. Great to be here.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, this is where you get involved. What piece of art moves you? Call or text us 212-433-9692, 212-4433-WNYC or you can reach out via social media, @AllOfItWNYC, the piece of art in New York City that moves you. All right, we're going to get into this, but what did you use as a criteria for this list?

Thelma Golden: Alison, when asked this question, of course, I thought there's no way I can come up with 10 works of art. Could I even come up with 100? As someone who spent their life in the city, in museums, my entire career working with artists was very hard. I decided that I would approach the list the way I approach it when friends say to me, "I'd like to see some art."

Really thinking about a way to guide people through some of the city's most amazing museums and other sites for art and artists, and thinking about works that are always on view and some that are in really amazing exhibitions at this moment that I hope everyone will go and see.

Alison Stewart: All right, let's dive in. You picked a piece by the late Faith Ringgold, American People Series #20: Die. It's a picture of people, Black and white people, with sort of anguished looks on their faces. There's blood in certain parts of it, knives, I believe there's a gun. The year is 1967. What was she trying to say about race relations?

Thelma Golden: Faith Ringgold was an artist whose work was defined by her commitment to thinking and speaking truth to the ideas of who we are, through our own individual stories and through the history of this country. I this work, which was inspired by Picasso's Guernica, she was imagining what it meant in 1967 to imagine the revolution that was happening to create change. That painting, American People Series #20: Die, is an exemplar of this.

It was a great honor and pleasure to get to see when MoMA reopened in 2019 and this painting was hung and to see it at MoMA and to see it with Faith Ringgold getting to engage with this work that she made in the '60s, but was still speaking to us. I was in MoMA in the day after election day in 2016, and remember walking and seeing this painting and spending time with it, and thrill that it is up now, so that folks can spend time thinking about the way artists allow us to understand the histories that we are living in now.

Alison Stewart: Faith Ringgold died this year.

Thelma Golden: She did.

Alison Stewart: What would you like to say about her?

Thelma Golden: What I'd like to say about her is she's left us an enormous legacy as an artist, as an activist. You know, Faith Ringgold was raised in Harlem, and some of her work is inspired by the Harlem she grew up in. She was an artist, a woman who looked at art and craft as equal. Quilt making was at the center of her work, but she was also a painter and created works across two-dimensional media. What I'd like to say about Faith Ringgold is that we are continuing to learn from her works right now.

That's what's so incredible about this moment of being able to remember her and honor her legacy, but also to have the chance to continue to see these works and be inspired by them.

Alison Stewart: Next is Laura Wheeler Waring Women with a Bouquet. It's at the Brooklyn Museum as part of the rehang of their American Galleries. She's really having a year. We have the Harlem Renaissance show at the Met. We have her as part of the American galleries at Brooklyn. Why did you pick this painting of a woman holding flowers?

Thelma Golden: Well, I picked this 1940 painting by Laura Wheeler Waring, a portrait of a woman holding flowers, because it's a beautiful painting. I love this painting. When you're a museum director and you have a collection, you shouldn't covet the works of other museums collections. But--

Alison Stewart: But you know. [chuckles]

Thelma Golden: Right, exactly. Love that this work is one of many at the Brooklyn Museum that are made by women artists, artists of color. The rehang of the American galleries at the Brooklyn Museum are incredible, really writing new art histories. Imagining this work inserted this woman born in 1887, part of the Harlem Renaissance, someone who taught at Cheyney State College, some art educator, and made these portraits of African-Americans, her people, her world, showing us in our full humanity.

Alison Stewart: Yes. I was going to ask you, what do you like about her portraiture?

Thelma Golden: I love how her portraiture presents its subjects in ways that allow us to understand them as being fully in control and in possession of their autonomy. There's such strength in her portraits, but it's a quiet, elegant strength. That's also because her painting style is so beautiful. What it allows us to do is to move into these works, looking at the subjects, in this case, we don't get a full view of her face, but also looking at the detail, the way she renders the flowers, the background, the way we understand just the color composition in this painting is so endlessly fascinating to me.

Alison Stewart: I wonder if you know this, and if you don't, it's fine, but I thought it was interesting that she drew covers for the NAACP magazine The Crisis. I wondered if she was political or was that what an artist did at the time?

Thelma Golden: I think it's a combination of the two. I think that African-American artists, through many generations, have always been critical parts of our freedom movements, and artists use their skills on behalf of our liberation and uplift. She was one of many artists who contributed to the crisis as well as the other magazines and newspapers of that era. I think it's because, as an artist, she imagined herself as having a voice in our world, and that's part of the legacy of Waring. I'm so glad that so many people are coming to see her work.

It was a pleasure to see it in the Harlem Renaissance exhibition. Groundbreaking show that was at the Metropolitan Museum last spring. Now, to have this work, and I want people to know, Ms. Waring is in Brooklyn, she lives there, so go and see this painting.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Thelma Golden from the Studio Museum in Harlem. She's joining us for our WNYC Centennial Series, 100 pieces of art you should see in New York City. Listeners, what is a piece of art that moves you in this city? Call or text us at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. I got a text here that says, "At MoMA, Jackson Pollock Number 31, 1950 is my absolute favorite painting to look at in New York City." Let's talk to Harry, who's calling in from Manhattan. Hi, Harry.

Harry: Hello.

Alison Stewart: Hello.

Harry: Hi. Thank you, guys, for taking my call. I just wanted to give a shout out to-- I love the permanent installation works or not semi-permanent, I guess, in New York, and particularly down in Tribeca, there's the Dream House by La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, and Jung Hee Choi. It's down on Church Street and it's this really beautiful immersive soundscape and fully encompassing environment that it's really difficult to describe, but it's been around for almost 10 years now. For people that don't know it, you can walk right by and just miss it.

You walk up to the second floor and you can just lay down in this room for, I mean, honestly, like I've been in there for two hours at Eclipse, sometimes. It's this very like meditative, beautiful space, and a really great reprieve away from the city. I really recommend that everybody go and experience that if they're in the city.

Alison Stewart: Thanks so much for calling in. You know the piece?

Thelma Golden: I do, and I am so glad that it was spoken about. This is a work that is stewarded by the Dia Art Foundation and an example of a kind of site-specific work by artists that can exist in our world. As the caller said, one could walk by it and not know its art. The experience is one that allows lots of people to understand how art cannot-- It can be something more than just seeing things on walls, so love that, that was brought up.

Alison Stewart: On your list, you have Caroline Kent, a short play about watching shadows move across the room. It's an ongoing site-specific mural at the Queens Museum. This is huge. It's huge. This whole wall, it's sort of a dark shade, and it's got pictures, shapes, and different colors. Tell us a little bit More about Caroline Kent.

Thelma Golden: First of all, Caroline Kent is a Chicago-based painter, who is invested in abstraction, often geometry plays a role in her work, and also color. She makes paintings, works on paper, sculptures, but this work at the Queens Museum, a commission, is a huge site-specific sculptural painting on the wall. It's something that a work that if you were close to it, you're seeing it in its specific detail, but then there at the museum, it exists in the main space and you can walk back and see it in a large way.

I love that wall at the Queens Museum where many artists are commissioned because of that experience of seeing something that's massive and close up, which echoes, I think, the way we experience, of course, the panorama that's at the Queens Museum, which I say to everyone, there are many reasons to go to the Queens Museum. First, of course, there are amazing art programs and exhibitions, but also, the panorama. Anyone who grew up in New York City--

Alison Stewart: Has got to see it.

Thelma Golden: Yes, you did that as a child, and I have great nostalgia, but that's how we understand the panorama, right? Close up and far away.

Alison Stewart: It was interesting. I watched a small video of Caroline Kent and she said that she likes to think of the art breaking out of the frame. It makes sense that she would interact with walls and space.

Thelma Golden: Yes, and that she is interested in that idea because she also wants her viewers to engage with the geometry of her works. Not confined in ways that perhaps we might think of them. Also, what's wonderful about this is, Caroline is very inventive and experimental in her work. She allows herself the opportunity to play. What I see here is this combination of the rigor of the ideas around her work, but also, a sort of freedom that then creates this beautiful huge wall.

Alison Stewart: Got a couple of texts here. "Cy Twombly, Four Seasons at the MoMA." "Edward Hopper's Gas. Not only myself, but I found many people attracted to it." By the way, it's 100 years since the Hoppers got married.

Thelma Golden: Right.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to, I think it's Morgain in Manhattan. Hi, Morgain.

Morgain: Hi. I wanted to talk about the four paintings by an American artist who's not very well known, but is being really rediscovered, especially by what I would call, like early career women artists today, such as myself. They're each called a cathedral. There's the cathedrals of art, there's the cathedrals of Wall Street, and there's the cathedrals of Fifth Avenue. She just had such a radically different way of painting at the time, that was really, I think, misunderstood. They're currently in the sort of basement area of the Met, but if you go take a look at them, they're really unlike anything else on view.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling in.

Thelma Golden: Thank you, Morgain. I'm going to take a look.

Alison Stewart: Jordan Casteel. I love Jordan Casteel. This is the Field of view. The piece is called Charles, 2016 at the Hill Art Foundation. It's up until November 23rd. Some of the pieces in this collection have been ultimately promised to the Met and to the Guggenheim. You've chosen Charles. Charles sitting by himself, he's sitting on a box, there's a newspaper stand beside him, a newspaper box, he's looking directly into the camera. What do you think about Charles' life when you're looking at him?

Thelma Golden: What I think about is that I want to know more, and I think that's what characterizes Jordan Casteel's portraits. Jordan is an artist based here in New York City and in the Catskills. She is a painter who is a portrait painter, but has moved to still life as well as some landscape. She was in the residency program at the Studio Museum, and that was at the time when I got to know her work. She was making works like Charles, portraits of people that she was engaging with and meeting on the streets of Harlem.

When I look at this painting, that's also what I see. It's a portrait of Charles, but it's also a portrait of that moment in Harlem.

Alison Stewart: All right, this is our nice segue to the Pass Carry Hold: Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2023–24. I think this is the sixth iteration of it. Yes?

Thelma Golden: At MoMA, PS1.

Alison Stewart: First of all, tell people what the purpose of this program is.

Thelma Golden: Yes. The Studio in our name comes from the fact that when we were founded in 1968, it was with the idea to create a residency program for artists to have a year in a studio in the museum to engage with their own practice and each other as well as Harlem. From the year we were founded, we've had three artists every year. At the end of their residency, there is an exhibition. I put this on my list because, as a curator, I always want to encourage people to engage with art being made right now. I mean, literally right now.

The residency program and the annual exhibition is one way we make that possible at the Studio Museum. This year, the three artists, Sonya Louise Davis, Malcolm Peacock, and Zoë Pulley each have presentations of work they made over the year that they've been in studio with us at the Studio Museum.

Alison Stewart: There's so much in this show. I mean, it's so colorful. I do want you to describe the sort of enormous tree trunk-

Thelma Golden: Yes.

Alison Stewart: -when you come in.

Thelma Golden: Yes. All three artists in the program this year, I think, are making bold experiments with materials and with ideas. Sonia, Zoë, and Malcolm, you're describing Malcolm Peacock's sculpture, which is a tree trunk, which lives as a way for us to think about, not just what this object is, but what it also indicates. What's wonderful about the Artists in Residence exhibition is it's a time when we want artists at that early inflection point in their career to live deeply in making works that feel that they are saying and being who they want to be as artists. That's what's so wonderful about these wonderful, ambitious works.

Alison Stewart: Let's take another call. Maddie is calling in from Fair Lawn, New Jersey. Hi, Maddie, thanks so much for calling All Of It.

Maddie: Hi, Alison. As a fifth generation Jewish New Yorker, now living in New Jersey, but anyway, the piece of art that really moves me is the Garment Worker by Judith Weller. The reason for that is because it reminds me of my great, great grandmother, for whom I'm named, who came over in the early 20th century from Poland at age 14. She worked for years to pay for her siblings tickets over from Poland. It's because of her that I'm here and not wherever else we would be if we had stayed in Europe. I'm very grateful and I'd love to see it every time I pass.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling in. That is such a perfect example of what this is about. Like, what art can mean to each individual?

Thelma Golden: Exactly, and I think that's what's so wonderful because we all can have different experiences. It's what I love about works that are on view in some of the museums where we can see them over and over again. We can imagine what it means to think about that particular work. I also think what happens, and I'm sure our caller might feel this way, over time, our feelings broaden or deepen and they change. I mean, there are works of art that I have looked at for decades over and over again, but I continue to have new experiences and see new things.

Alison Stewart: We are talking about 100 pieces of art you should see in New York City. My guest is Thelma Golden from the Studio Museum in Harlem. We'll have more after a quick break. We'll also take more of your calls about the piece of art that moves you. Our numbers 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. We'll be right back. You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest in studio is Thelma Golden, director and chief curator at the Studio Museum of Harlem. She is helping us out with our centennial series, the 100 pieces of art you should see in New York City.

Let me read some of these texts to you, Thelma. "Yes, to Jordan Casteel. Yesterday, in my post-election misery, I managed to drag myself to see her show at the Hill Art Foundation on 10th Avenue. It made me feel better." "At the Brooklyn Museum, The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago nearly moves me to tears. It's so thoughtfully done and such a showcase a woman's strength, audacity, and creativity through history." "My favorite piece in New York City is the Astor Place Cube. Nothing makes me smile like seeing people work together to spin the cube. It's such a delightful work of public art."

Number 6. Well, it's not number 6. It's another addition on your list, I should say, is Alma Thomas Mars Dust. It's usually in the collection at the Whitney, but it's now part of Edges of Ailey.

Thelma Golden: It is, it is. I truly often hate the question when people say, "What's your favorite work of art?" Because again, like--

Alison Stewart: So many.

Thelma Golden: Right, so many, but what I will say is truly a work that I do think of as one of my favorite works of art is Alma Thomas' painting Mars Dust, made in 1972 in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. As you know, I was proud to be a curator at the Whitney for a decade, and in that time, very particularly proud to be able to engage with the works of African-American artists in that collection, and none more than Mars Dust. Any opportunity I had, I would want to see this painting.

It thrills me now that it's included in a truly amazing, fantastic exhibition that I encourage all to see at the Whitney called Edges of Ailey, an exhibition about Alvin Ailey, the choreographer, cultural icon, but puts Ailey in the context of his influence and the influences on him through the culture. As a result of that, Adrienne Edwards, the curator of this amazing exhibition, has an amazing group of artworks in this exhibition and includes Alma Thomas' Mars Dust. Thrilled to get to see it.

Alison Stewart: Now, is it true that she was the first Black woman to have a solo show at the Whitney?

Thelma Golden: At the Whitney Museum in 1974. Alma Thomas was a pioneer. She was the first graduate of the art program at Howard University, the beginning of the 20th century. She was an art teacher in Washington, DC, and began her professional career when she retired. I came to know her work because the Studio Museum made an exhibition of her work in the '80s that I came to know when I was a student, but also, at the Whitney, understood this history of her being the first Black woman to have a solo exhibition there in 1974.

Alison Stewart: Lorna Simpson, Earth & Sky (unknown fall) on view at Hauser & Wirth in New York. She's been described as a conceptual photographer-

Thelma Golden: Yes.

Alison Stewart: -and most of the show falls in that category, but you picked a piece that is lettering on a wall, right?

Thelma Golden: Yes.

Alison Stewart: It's made of meteorite bronze resin lettering and iron patina. Whose words are these?

Thelma Golden: These are the words that come out of a book that was published in 1922 that describes the sighting of a meteor. What Lorna Simpson has done in this exhibition is to use that text and a deep understanding or deep reading of that text to inform an exhibition that includes sculpture as well as paintings.

It is an amazing exhibition, not only because it continues to allow us to see the ways in which Lorna Simpson, in her work, continue to redefine the space of conceptual art making, but also to, in this very specific moment, think about the idea of voice in history, who gets to speak and what we understand through which voice. It's an exhibition that just opened at Hauser & Wirth, and I encourage all to see it.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Bennett, who's calling us from Woodstock. Hi, Bennett.

Bennett: Hi.

Alison Stewart: Hi.

Bennett: I have a favorite painting in New York City. It's the Officer and Laughing Girl by Vermeer, which is at The Frick. I love this little painting. It's a little gem. It's meticulously painted with a really taut geometry. The light glows, and it's got a wonderful narrative which projects a sense of humor.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling in. Let's talk to Carl from Staten Island. Hi, Carl.

Carl: I love the Woman in Gold. Was introduced to it by the movie. I love the backstory. Saw the print of it in Vienna when I was there a couple of years ago, but seeing the print is just not the same as seeing at the Neue Galerie, which is one of my favorite museums to begin with.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for your call. Matthew. Hey, Matthew.

Matthew: Hi there. I love the mosaics by Jim Power in the East Village that are on the light posts.

Alison Stewart: What do you like about them?

Matthew: Do you know what I'm talking about?

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Matthew: I love that they preserve history. I love that they were done by someone who didn't have any support institutionally. He made it from what he had and that it was sort of a love letter to the city and the history of the city.

Alison Stewart: Love that. Thank you so much for calling. "I saw Monet's Water Lilies at MoMA 10 years ago when I was new to the city, and I was admittedly, a bit caught off guard by how moved, even overwhelmed, I was by it. Coincidentally, about an hour later, while walking through the Upper West Side, it happened on the Banksy on 79th Street, I didn't even know it was there. These are two of the city's many treasures." That's Devin from Riverdale. Let's Talk about Steve McQueen, Exodus on your list at Dia Chelsea until summer 2025. This is the film director. Yes?

Thelma Golden: This is the film director who is an artist who's worked across the medium. I know Steve McQueen through the works that he has made, often in video and film, but that presented in museums and galleries. This work, Exodus, which is dated 1992-7, is a work that I saw soon after probably it was made, and I've had the chance to see it as it's been presented in exhibitions over the years. Thrilled that it's part of this presentation of Steve's work here at Dia on 22nd street, and also, this major new work at Dia Beacon.

Alison Stewart: Can you give us a sense of what the film's about?

Thelma Golden: This video, Steve McQueen is a British artist, now living in Amsterdam, but this work is a video that follows two British Caribbean men who are walking through the streets of London holding two plants. It's a work that shifts your idea of time. It's a work that allows you to sit in the ambiguity of what the action is. It's incredibly beautiful. It's meditative, and a work that is tied to Steve's ongoing investigation of his own history and culture in some of his work.

Alison Stewart: All right, you have Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now. It'll be on view at the Met November 17th, 2024 through February 2025. You have two pieces that are almost 100 years apart.

Thelma Golden: Which is why I picked them, and it's because this exhibition, call Flight into Egypt, taking its name from the Tanner that was made in 1923, which looks at Henry Tanner, who was a painter who studied here, went abroad, and created a body of work that is historically significant for his position as a Black artist at that time, making work. It's also a work in its title that we see, which references Egypt. This exhibition getting ready to open at the Met is about that.

This kind of looking at Egypt through an African, African-American lens, which then takes us to Lauren Halsey's work, who some listeners might remember from her amazing rooftop installation at the Met a year or so ago, but has a work in this exhibition called FreedomEx, made in 2022. I wanted these two works by African-American artists. Alison, that is my area of expertise and passion.

Thinking about these historic legacies artist, thinking about working around similar ideas 100 years apart, which gives us a sense of understanding how we can think about progress, how we can think about also the different ways in which these artists have held our history through their work.

Alison Stewart: You are very generous with the other institutions and their other shows, the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum, the Met Museum. You've been very generous today.

Thelma Golden: Well, thank you. I grew up here. I feel one of the gifts of growing up in New York City is I grew up in the museums you named and so many others. It's what made me want to be a curator. That's something I decided in high school, and it was because I had the chance to go to museums and to engage with works of art. That's what continues to inspire me and what I hope all else will do as well.

Alison Stewart: Got more texts. "I love Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth. I feel sadness and weakness of the moment, yet I feel the woman's power and determination." Thanks so much for texting that in. This is a tweet we got, says, "Favorite piece of museum at the Met, the first, Tiffany's glass of waterfalls in the American Wing courtyard. I love it so much, I painted it for my new book, Footnotes from the Most Fascinating Museums." That's interesting.

"Fantastic four works of art that must be seen at the Met. Aristotle contemplating the Bust of Homer by Rembrandt, The Death of Socrates, America Today, and my favorite, Panoramic View of the Palace and Gardens of Versailles." Very interesting list. Okay, we're going to get to the last on your list. Tom Lloyd. It's on view. It's Code Switch: Distributing Blackness, Reprogramming Internet Art. Organized by The Kitchen, it's on view at The Schomburg Center. This explores the collection of data, right?

Thelma Golden: The exhibition Code Switch looks at, again, the ways in which we can understand race culture in relation to Internet art. That's in the title, but I more broadly, sort of widen it to the digital experience. This exhibition curated by Legacy Russell, is on view at The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, which is going to be 100 years old next year. As we talk about these centennials, we are so proud in Harlem to be celebrating that centennial soon.

Code Switch is on view at the Schomburg, and I added this Tom Lloyd to the list because it is a work I would love people to see in this exhibition, but also because Tom Lloyd was the artist whose exhibition opened the Studio Museum in 1968.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Thelma Golden: We've just announced, as we get ready to reopen, we've been closed since 2018, and as we get ready to reopen in our new building on 125th Street, we will open with an exhibition of Tom Lloyd's work. The hope is that this work now in Code Switch will begin a conversation. That hope will continue as we get to see more of Lloyd's work and as we, the Studio Museum, get to be back open and engaging with audiences and art again soon.

Alison Stewart: You got a little shout out here. It says, "Thelma G is amazing."

Thelma Golden: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: Someone may have mentioned the Nick Cave mosaics on the 42nd Street subway station, "Makes me so happy to be a New Yorker."

Thelma Golden: This team here would say that that was on my list because I had 11 and 12, and number 11 was the Nick Cave, also because that program, Arts for Transit, brings art to people every day. I just applaud the effort that's been made to create beautiful artworks in our subway system.

Alison Stewart: Thelma Golden is a director and chief curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Thank you so much for your list in participating.

Thelma Golden: Thank you and happy birthday, WNYC. I am such a fan. I'm a sustaining member. We know membership's important. It's important to us at the Studio Museum, but I also just want to say thank you for all that you do to bring us these amazing conversations.

Alison Stewart: Thanks.