Copyright Arkansas Online
The Studio Museum in Harlem is having its grand reopening on Saturday and a work by Little Rock artist Aj Smith will be among those on display at the 57-year-old New York institution of Black culture. "American Dream Series," a 2025 silverpoint drawing by Smith, is part of the exhibition "From the Studio: Fifty-Eight Years of Artists in Residence," which is among several shows, commissions and installations celebrating the museum's new $160 million, 82,000-square-foot building at 144 W. 125th St. The Artist-in-Residence program has been a part of the museum since it was founded by a group of artists and philanthropists above a liquor store in 1968. "From the Studio" focuses on many of those who participated in the residency over the decades and gathers newly commissioned works on paper, pieces from the museum's collection and art on loan for the show. The exhibit "pays tribute to this foundational program that has nurtured artists of African descent for more than half a century," according to a press release. Smith, who retired in 2019 after spending nearly 40 years teaching in the department of art and design at the University of Arkansas Little Rock, grew up in Coahoma County, Mississippi. He earned a bachelor's degree in painting and printmaking from the Kansas City Art Institute and a master's in painting and printmaking from Queens College, City University of New York. He is best known for his hyper-realistic graphite and silverpoint drawings of everyday people, especially those in his "Faces of the Delta" series. His work is in the collections of the Arkansas Arts Center, Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, the Philadelphia Art Museum, Central Institute of Fine Arts in Beijing and many others. Smith was an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1978-'79. During his time there he shared studio space with two other artists, Noah Jemison and David Hammonds. "It was an incredibly large space for an artist's studio," Smith recalls. "We had, maybe, 4,500-5,000 square feet between the three of us." His time at the museum allowed him to get to know Black art luminaries like Romare Beardenand others. "Being in New York, in the middle of the art world ... I could be exposed to all of this," Smith says. "I could meet people who were just two or three generations from people who were part of the Harlem Renaissance. I got to listen to those people." The museum reached out to Smith late last year about using one of his works in the new show. The one he chose is from his new "American Dream" series. He plans to attend the museum's opening with his wife, artist Marjorie Williams-Smith. "This is an exceptional honor for me to be included among all of the artists they have had over the past nearly 60 years," he says.
