‘Harlem has always been evolving’: inside the Studio Museum’s $160m new home

The iconic museum, which was founded in 1968, has been rehoused in 82,000-sq-ft building providing a new destination for Black art in New York City

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all it the second Harlem renaissance. On Manhattan’s 125th Street, where a statue of Adam Clayton Powell Jr strides onwards and upwards, and a sign marks the spot where a freed Nelson Mandela dropped by, there is bustle and buzz.

The celebrated Apollo Theater is in the midst of a major renovation. The National Black Theatre is preparing to move into a $80m arts complex spanning a city block. In September the National Urban League opened a $250m building containing its headquarters, affordable housing and retail space with New York’s first civil rights museum to come.

And a flag flies high above the pavement of 125th Street. It is the Stars and Stripes, reimagined by the conceptual artist David Hammons in black, red and green, inspired by the Pan-African flag adopted by Marcus Garvey in the 1920s. The installation welcomes visitors to the charcoal, grey and glass facade of the reborn Studio Museum in Harlem.