Alma Thomas’s Exhibition at Studio Museum in Harlem | Teachers College Columbia University

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TC to Host a Curated Tour of Alumna Alma Thomas’s Exhibition at Studio Museum in Harlem

Alma Thomas (M.A. ’34)
Alma Thomas (M.A. ’34)
On Thursday, October 20th, the work of the late renowned expressionist painter and Teachers College alumna Alma Thomas (M.A. ’34) will be the focus of a special Curator’s Tour and Reception at the Studio Museum in Harlem, hosted by TC’s Office of Alumni Relations.

The Tour will run from 6 to 7 p.m. at Studio Museum in Harlem, 144 West 125th Street, with a reception to be followed at a location to be announced. Alumni who want to attend should register online. 

Apollo 12
Apollo 12 "Splash Down", 1970 by Alma Thomas
Thomas first focused on her artistic career at the age of 69 after retiring as a school teacher. Her solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1972 was the museum’s first by an African-American woman. In 2009, 31 years after her death, her painting, Watusi (Hard Edge) was one of two chosen by First Lady Michelle Obama and White House curator William Allman to be exhibited during the Obama presidency. In 2015, the Obamas hung Thomas’s work Resurrection in the Old Family Dining Room. The painting is the first work by an African-American woman to hang in the public spaces of the White House as part of the permanent collection.

The Teachers College curated tour at Studio Museum in Harlem will be attended by TC President Susan Fuhrman and Art & Art Education Professor Judith Burton, Director of the College’s Macy Gallery. An informal talk at the reception afterward will include Mary Anne Rose (Ed.D. ‘05), an alumna of TC’s Art & Art Education program, whose own late husband was the celebrated African-American artist Herbert Gentry. Gentry's work was featured in exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1982, 1997 and 2013.

Published Friday, Oct 14, 2016