Thelma Golden

Thelma Golden (born 1965 in St. Albans, Queens ) is an American art curator, who is the Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City, United States.

She is noted as one of the originators of the term post-blackness.

Golden graduated from Buckley Country Day School in 1980 and earned a B.A. in Art History and African-American Studies from Smith College in 1987.

As a student, Golden helped put several exhibitions together at the Smith College Museum of Art, including one called Dorothy C. Miller: With an Eye to American Art, about the "Americans" exhibitions of MoMA curator Dorothy Canning Miller.

Golden also worked as an intern at The Studio Museum in 1985, where she cataloged the papers of painter Benny Andrews among other tasks.

She also worked under curator Kellie Jones, whom Golden later credited with having "taught me what it meant to do the work".

Golden's first curatorial position was at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1987.

She was then a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art from 1988 to 1998.

From 1991 to 1998, Golden was a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where she gained a reputation for promoting young black conceptual artists.

She was the visual arts director at the Jamaica Arts Center in Queens before she became director of the Whitney Museum's outpost in midtown Manhattan (since closed) in 1991.

In her 1993 biennial and her 1994 exhibition Black Male, she introduced political and controversial works into the Whitney's collection.

In 1993, she organized the museum's biennial along with Elisabeth Sussman, Lisa Phillips, and John Hanhardt.

The show was criticized by some for its social and political themes and became "one of most hotly debated Whitney shows ever".

Golden later looked back at the show as a "transformative experience" that helped her see how "art and artists can exist in a museum space in a way that is radical and powerful and can create change because of the work."

The following year, Golden curated a show that would become still more controversial: Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art (1994–95).

This exhibition explored negative stereotypes of black masculinity, including homelessness and criminality.

It included artworks by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Robert Mapplethorpe, Glenn Ligon, Dawn DeDeaux, and David Hammons, as well as films such as Gordon Parks' Shaft and Marlon Riggs' Tongues Untied.

Some older artists described the show's exploration of stereotypes as "irresponsible" and criticized what they saw as an over-representation of non-black artists.

In a rarer positive review, art historian Linda Nochlin described it in ARTnews as "one of the liveliest and most visually engaging exhibitions" of the season.

The New York Times noted that the show was bringing unusually large black audiences to the museum, but that the artwork left them polarized in their reactions.

Despite being initially "critically pummeled", the show's reputation improved in the following years.

Within a decade, the Times was describing it as "an important show", and two decades later, both ARTnews and the Whitney itself described it as a "landmark exhibition".

While with the Whitney, Golden also organized solo shows of the works of Bob Thompson.

Lorna Simpson, and Jacob Lawrence.

In November 1998, Golden and fellow curator Elisabeth Sussman resigned from their positions after not being assigned portfolios by new museum director Maxwell L. Anderson.

Philanthropist Peter Norton, who had helped fund Golden's Black Male exhibition, resigned from the Whitney's board of trustees in response to Golden's departure.

Golden was the Special Projects Curator for contemporary art collectors Peter Norton and Eileen Harris Norton from 1998 to 2000.

Golden joined the Studio Museum as Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs in 2000 before succeeding Lowery Stokes Sims, the museum's former director and president, in 2005.

Thelma Golden grew up in Queens, New York, the daughter of Arthur Golden and Thelma (née Eastmond) Golden.

She had an interest in art from an early age and was particularly influenced by H. W. Janson's History of Art.

She had her first hands-on training as a senior in high school at the New Lincoln School, training as a curatorial apprentice at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Her decision to become a curator was inspired by Lowery Stokes Sims, the first African-American curator of that museum.

She then joined the Studio Museum in Harlem--at the time the country's only accredited museum of African-American Art--in 2000 as deputy director for exhibitions.

Former MoMA curator Lowery Stokes Sims was appointed at the same time as the museum's new director.

At the museum, Golden organized exhibitions including Isaac Julien: Vagabondia (2000); Martin Puryear: The Cane Project (2000); Glenn Ligon: Stranger (2001); Black Romantic: The Figurative Impulse in Contemporary Art (2002); harlemworld: Metropolis as Metaphor (2004); Chris Ofili: Afro Muses (2005); Frequency (2005–06), with Christine Y. Kim; Africa Comics (2006–07); and Kori Newkirk: 1997–2007 (2007–08).

She championed the work of artists such as Kehinde Wiley, Glenn Ligon, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby.

Her 2001 exhibition Freestyle was particularly noted for helping to establish the term "post-blackness" and for helping to launch the careers of LA artists Eric Wesley and Mark Bradford, among others.

In 2005, Golden became the Studio Museum's director and chief curator.

She adjusted the museum's schedule so that Wednesdays were devoted to school trips and private events, but Thursdays and Fridays the museum was open into the evening so that a wider range of guests could visit.

From 2017 to 2020, ArtReview chose her annually as one of the 10 most influential people in the contemporary art world.