The Studio Museum in Harlem is paying tribute to the late Peggy Cooper Cafritz with the exhibition “Dreams of This Future: The Collection of Peggy Cooper Cafritz.” The show, on view through Feb. 28, 2027, showcases works from her major donation to the Studio Museum following her death in 2018.
It’s giving viewers the chance to look at Cafritz’s lifetime of Black arts advocacy.
Born in Mobile, Alabama, Cafritz moved to Washington, D.C., to attend George Washington University and stayed. In 1974, she helped establish the prestigious Duke Ellington School of the Arts (DESA), an arts-education-focused public high school. She also became a major arts patron and a strong advocate for empowering Black students and Black artists.
Cafritz was an early collector of paintings, photography, sculpture, and textiles by artists of African descent. She bought works by artists like Kerry James Marshall, Simone Leigh, Kehinde Wiley, Kara Walker, Deana Lawson, Wangechi Mutu, Titus Kaphar, Nick Cave, Tschabalala Self, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Sanford Biggers, and featured them in her home. In 2009, a fire destroyed more than 300 art pieces in her house, but she began collecting again and built a second collection in the last years of her life. When she passed, The Studio Museum says she left the museum with more than 400 works by more than 200 artists of African descent.
In “Dreams of This Future,” visitors can see a three-room gallery featuring the range of art styles and interests that caught Cafritz’s eye. The exhibit includes pieces like Arcmanoro Niles’ oil and acrylic painting “A Promise to Never Get Old,” which focuses on the beauty of a young, sexy woman richly saturated in layers of oranges, pinks, purples, and greens. In another portrait-like display, Simone Leigh’s 2015 terracotta, porcelain, and epoxy sculpture “No Face (Black)” centers a featureless Black female face that, by its posture, appears strong and ready to take on whatever comes. Similarly, the silkscreen poster “In Revolution One Wins or One Dies,” by artist/activist Emory Douglas—who served as Minister of Culture and art director for the Black Panther Party—outlines the image of a militant African American figure moving forward. These and other pieces show Cafritz’s embrace of representations of Black art and Black life.
The Studio Museum in Harlem is located at 144 West 125th Street. Tickets can be purchased online at studiomuseum.org/visit or at the Museum.
