Twenty-one Black women artists now fill the galleries of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, marking the first time the storied institution has mounted an exhibition of this scale devoted entirely to their work. The show, titled “Forging Ahead: Recent Acquisitions of Black Women Artists,” opened on September 24 and runs through March 27, 2027, across the center's main and media galleries.
A Centennial Showcase With National Names
According to The New York Public Library, the exhibition spans paintings, textiles, sculptures, collages, and photography from artists including Simone Leigh, Tschabalala Self, Nona Faustine, Firelei Báez, Xenobia Bailey, and Barbara Jones-Hogu. CBS News New York, which first reported on the exhibit, noted that it marks the first time the Schomburg Center has opened a show of this size solely featuring Black women, according to CBS News. The center sits on 135th Street in Harlem, a neighborhood long tied to its research and cultural mission.
The show was curated by Associate Curator of Photographs and Prints La Tanya S. Autry and Curator of Art and Artifacts Tammi Lawson, who designed it specifically to confront historical gender disparities within museum and library collections, per the library's press materials. Among the centerpiece acquisitions purchased for the Schomburg's 100-year celebration are a 2023 porcelain face vessel titled “Untitled” by Simone Leigh and photographer Nona Faustine's complete “Mitochondria” series, alongside selections from her “White Shoes” series, the same release notes.
From Venice's Golden Lion to Harlem's Galleries
Leigh's inclusion carries particular weight: the sculptor became the first Black woman to represent the United States in a solo exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2022, where she was awarded the Golden Lion prize, the library's blog recounts. Her presence underscores the exhibition's focus on Black women artists whose work has historically been overlooked by major institutions.
That gap is well documented. A 2019 study by Williams College researchers analyzing 18 major American art museum collections found that African American artists accounted for only 1.2% of all works, while white artists made up 85.4% and men 87.4%, according to The Vindicator. An analysis of national museum acquisitions published by Artnet found an even steeper disparity specifically for Black women, with their work representing just 0.5% of total acquisitions across U.S. museums between 2008 and 2019, as reported by Panorama.
Marking 100 Years of the Schomburg's Mission
The exhibition coincides with the Schomburg Center's centennial celebration, marking 100 years since its precursor, the Division of Negro Literature, History and Prints, opened at Harlem's 135th Street Branch Library on May 8, 1925, per the library's own account. The center's foundation traces back to Afro-Puerto Rican scholar and bibliophile Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, whose 4,600-item personal library of pamphlets, artwork and books was acquired by The New York Public Library in 1926, as detailed by The Guardian.
The push to preserve Black women's history at the center extends beyond visual art. The Schomburg Center acquired the complete personal papers of Afro-Latina scholar and Harlem activist Miriam Jiménez Román in March, expanding its archival holdings alongside the new gallery acquisitions, the library's blog notes. All of the works featured in “Forging Ahead” are now part of NYPL's permanent collection, available to researchers and the public well beyond the exhibition's closing date.
The Schomburg Center's latest exhibition places visual art, and the women who make it, at the center of the institution's next hundred years.
