Wallach Art Gallery

Wallach Art Gallery Columbia University's premier gallery. Free and open to the public. The Miriam and Ira D.

Wallach Art Gallery advances Columbia University's historical, critical, and creative engagement with the visual arts. Serving as both a laboratory and a forum, The Wallach Art Gallery offers opportunities for curatorial practice and discourse, while bridging the diverse approaches to the arts at the University with a welcome broader public. We present projects that meet one or more of the followi

ng criteria:

---Are organized by graduate students and faculty in Art History & Archaeology or by other Columbia scholars,
---Focus on the contemporary artists of our campus, or
---Present new scholarship on University special collections. Established in 1986, The Wallach Art Gallery is the University's premier visual arts space, presenting numerous critically acclaimed exhibitions, a dynamic range of programming, and publications that have made lasting contributions to scholarship. Since its beginning the gallery has presented exhibitions that examine a broad range of cultures, time periods, and styles, some of which have traveled to other national and international venues. The Wallach Art Gallery also presents projects that animate other university spaces as opportunity arises. The Wallach Art Gallery operates in close relationship to the Department of Art History and Archaeology, School of the Arts, and the university Libraries, particularly Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library.

At The Museum of Modern Art on August 21, 2026, artist robin holder and educator Donna M. Jones were interviewed by Soul...
08/26/2026

At The Museum of Modern Art on August 21, 2026, artist robin holder and educator Donna M. Jones were interviewed by Souleo, curator of the Wallach Art Gallery exhibition “Children’s Art Carnival in Harlem: The Making of Contemporary Artists.”

The event included remarks by MoMA director of public engagement Leonardo Bravo and Wallach Art Gallery associate director of education and public programs Jennifer Mock.

The Harlem Children's Art Carnival (1969–present) grew out of MoMA’s annual event-based art education series of the same name established by MoMA’s founding education director, Victor D'Amico, in 1942.

In 1979, MoMA re-imagined the Carnival as a free outreach program under the leadership of Betty Blayton-Taylor (1937–2016), an artist (known as Betty Blayton), educator, community activist, and co-founder of the Studio Museum in Harlem.

The conversation began with the Children’s Art Carnival’s origins, its central role in supporting the art of Black and diverse contemporary artists, and Betty Blayton-Taylor’s leadership in creating a dynamic teaching environment and pedagogical model for community-based arts education.

The 125-seat Celeste Bartos Theater at MoMA was filled to capacity for the Friday evening event.

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Prior to becoming one of the most revered and celebrated artists in history, Basquiat was an intern at the Carnival. Dur...
08/26/2026

Prior to becoming one of the most revered and celebrated artists in history, Basquiat was an intern at the Carnival. During his mid-teens, Jean-Michel Basquiat along with Armando Alleyne—both students at the alternative high school, City-As-School—interned in Michael A. Cummings’s classroom where they assisted in teaching drawing, collage, and painting to both disabled and non-disabled students.

In between his internship duties, Basquiat was given opportunities at the Carnival to explore his own artistic interests, one of many contributing factors to his evolving aesthetic and emergence on the Downtown art scene. The Carnival’s executive director, Blayton-Taylor, noted, “He was doing silkscreen prints at the Carnival’s print workshop and he would take those downtown and show them to [Andy] Warhol and some of the other characters that were on the scene…They were intrigued with his imagery, a lot of which I think came from working with the young children…it’s very much into the childish iconography. So he has taken the children’s approach to the image and created a whole new approach to art.”

Created after his brief time at the Carnival, the works on view exemplify some of the influences he may have absorbed there. All three pieces possess the visceral kinetic energy of a child’s drawing, with imprecise lines and shapes, and scribbled handwriting. Untitled (Two Trucks) features Basquiat’s signature crown motif, an emblem with varied meanings such as racial pride, power, and irony. Untitled (heart Henry Geldzahler) is named after the legendary curator and Basquiat supporter. The erratic scrawlings suggest the impulsive nature of children, while the cartoon-like portrait Untitled (Simple Man) draws on children’s sometimes simplified visual language. 

Although Basquait’s time at the Carnival was brief, these works attest to the ways in which underrepresented community organizations and grassroots ecosystems have historically helped shape contemporary artists, despite their roles often being marginalized within mainstream art historical narratives.



“The Children’s Art Carnival in Harlem: The

robin holder, who was recently interviewed in the “Columbia Neighbors” online publication, the Children’s Art Carnival w...
08/19/2026

robin holder, who was recently interviewed in the “Columbia Neighbors” online publication, the Children’s Art Carnival was a space where deep relationships were forged.

She and fellow teaching artist Steve Mayo met there, and became life partners from 1985 until his passing in 2021.

holder began her "Warrior Women Wizards: Mystical Magical Mysteries" (1985–2006) series while teaching at the Carnival and engaging in, “...many long conversations about spirituality and metaphysics,” with Carnival executive director Betty Blayton-Taylor.

After being hired in 1978, holder spent 10 years as an instructor at the Carnival, where she “saw arts education as an avenue to address societal issues by motivating her students to harness their imaginations, consider possibilities, build skills, and think critically,” according to Brandee Sanders, author of the profile at Columbia Neighbors.

Artwork Image:

robin holder, “Discovery”, 1986. Linoleum print with stencils, 17 × 22 in.

Congratulations to Janet Olivia Henry, who has just been named a 2026 Joan Mitchell Fellow. Mitchell Fellows receive $60...
08/13/2026

Congratulations to Janet Olivia Henry, who has just been named a 2026 Joan Mitchell Fellow. Mitchell Fellows receive $60,000 in funding, distributed over five years and supplemented by additional career development opportunities.

The Joan Mitchell Foundation fellowships "recognize artistic excellence and elevate a wide range of visual artists and practices," and seek "to actively expand the visual arts to better reflect the diverse world in which we live."

Janet Oliva Henry has three works currently on view in the Wallach Art Gallery exhibition "Children's Art Carnival in Harlem: The Making of Contemporary Artists" through September 13, 2026.

"Untitled," 1971. Soft ground etching, 24 in x 18 in Courtesy of the artist and Gordon Robichaux, New York and STARS, Los Angeles

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During Senga Nengudi’s years living in East Harlem from 1971 to 1974, her artistic practice was shaped by both the Carni...
08/08/2026

During Senga Nengudi’s years living in East Harlem from 1971 to 1974, her artistic practice was shaped by both the Carnival’s student population and her observations while traveling through Harlem.

Most striking were the hunched, swaying bodies of people living on the street. Moved by this, Nengudi created her Spirit Flags series to depict “...the inner souls or spirits of people I have seen on the city streets; particularly in Harlem.” Using flag material and radiant colors, she created irregularly shaped sculptural forms whose “spirits” are animated by moving air. In accompanying photographs, Nengudi staged these spirits throughout Harlem in contrast with dark shadows and the hard surfaces of brick and concrete.

Nengudi’s blurring of distinctions between folk art, craft, sculpture, and photography draws on her Carnival experience with students who boldly imagined and experimented in their creative process. As she explained, “I’ve always enjoyed working with kids because they always take it to the next level…they just plow through all the barriers, just like folk art actually…”

This body of work later informed her famed R.S.V.P. series, in which she transformed nylon stockings into similarly amorphous forms.

Senga Nengudi’s solo exhibition titled Sand and Water is on view at Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art in Copenhagen, Denmark, running from May 22 through September 13, 2026.

“The Children’s Art Carnival in Harlem: The Making of Contemporary Artists,” is on view at the Wallach Art Gallery from June 26 to September 13, 2026. Learn more in our link in bio.

Senga Nengudi,
Teaching Artist, Children’s Art Carnival, circa early 1970s
Holler, 1973/2023. Nylon. Edition 1 of 2.
Down (Purple), Red Devil (soul 2), Drifting Leaves, 1972. Cibachrome print, triptych

Senga Nengudi, Water Composition, 1967-70/2019. © Senga Nengudi. Photo: Thomas Barrat

Uptown Triennial installation photos by Olympia Shannon.

On August 12, 2026, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California, opens "Lotty Rosenfeld: Di...
08/06/2026

On August 12, 2026, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California, opens "Lotty Rosenfeld: Disobedient Spaces," an exhibition that originated at Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University, where it was on view from November 7, 2025–March 15, 2026, as pictured.

Curated by Natalia Brizuela, UC Berkeley Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, Film and Media Studies, and Julia Bryan-Wilson, Columbia University Professor of Contemporary Art and LGBTQ+ Studies, this is the first US retrospective exhibition of Chilean artist Lotty Rosenfeld (1943–2020), who circumvented attempts to police thought, behaviors, and language through the ambiguities inherent in art.

Including work Rosenfeld made before, during, and after the Pinochet dictatorship in Rosenfeld's native Chile, "Disobedient Spaces" includes printmaking, collage, video, and site-specific installations, in which the artist deployed encoded political gestures to contest the militarization of public space and celebrate the imagination as the antidote to systems of control.

Highlighting feminine friendships, the exhibition features the artist's collaborative works with DIamela Eltit and Cecilia Vicuña, as well as her work with Escena de Avanzada, a group of avant-garde artists and writers. Rosenfeld's projects with the artist collective CADA (Colectivo Acciones de Arte), which she co-founded, include "Ay Sudemerica" (1981) in which the group arranged for six small planes to drop 400,000 leaflets over Santiago discussing the relationship between art and society.

Writing in ARTFORUM Megan Kincaid observed: "In layered formats that bridge art and action through a feminist semiotics, Rosenfeld proposed that providing sound, sight, and space to those who needed it most could be an act of radical justice: disobedience as solidarity."

In HYPERALLERGIC, Clara Maria Apostolatos wrote: "Across these works, what emerges most forcefully is that Rosenfeld's resistance was never simply oppositional, but built on collective methods."

Lotty Rosenfed: Disobedient Spaces will be on view at BAMPFA from August 12–November 15, 2026.

More info: bampfa.org

During middle school, Tschabalala Self attended the Carnival’s after-school program while simultaneously taking classes ...
07/31/2026

During middle school, Tschabalala Self attended the Carnival’s after-school program while simultaneously taking classes at the Harlem School of the Arts. Following in the path of her older siblings, who had also attended the Carnival, Self found herself immersed in a warm, enriching, and inspiring environment that increased her confidence, ignited her imagination, and influenced her passion for creating works from a Black cultural perspective.

“It created a subconscious and core understanding that the art world was accessible to me,” she said. “Being in that kind of space was really good for my imagination and for my confidence.”

The Carnival also influenced Self’s commitment to Black figuration, as seeing reflections of herself through the teaching artists and artistic projects affirmed the value of the Black narrative. In this expansive triptych, the Harlem-born artist channels memories of growing up in Hamilton Heights, on the same block as the Carnival. Self depicts the Black residents whose vibrant presence, stride, and attitude defined the neighborhood’s energy during her youth and continues to do so today.

Her visionary work is deeply rooted in the community, making her the perfect anchor for this summer's celebration of uptown creativity. This focus on depictive work is also evident in Self's recent public-art installation, Art Lovers (2026), which has been installed on the facade of the New Museum in New York and depicts a pair of lovers in an embrace.

“The Children’s Art Carnival in Harlem: The Making of Contemporary Artists,” is on view at the Wallach Art Gallery from June 26 to September 13, 2026. Learn more in our link in bio.

Once you've experienced her work with us, you can head downtown to see her facade commission at the New Museum (which will be up until March 2028).

Her outdoor sculpture installation Pioneer is also on view upstate at Art Omi for the summer season in Ghent, NY.

From our gallery uptown, to downtown, to upstate, you can find Tschabalala Self's work all over New York this summer.

Wallach Art Gallery
Uptown Triennial | Children’s Art Carnival in Harlem: The Making of Contemporary Artists
June 26 - September 13, 2026

New Museum
Facade: Tschabalala Self—Art Lovers
March 2026- March 2028

Art Omi
Tschabalala Self: Pioneer
Summer season

Tschabalala Self,
Student, Children’s Art Carnival, circa 2001-2003
12pm on 145th, 2022. Jean fabric, digitally printed t-shirt, velvet, lace, tulle, painted canvas, dyed canvas, acrylic, and Flashe on canvas.

An August 21st panel discussion at MoMA brings together artists and educators robin holder, Donna M. Jones, and Tschabal...
07/27/2026

An August 21st panel discussion at MoMA brings together artists and educators robin holder, Donna M. Jones, and Tschabalala Self for a discussion about the impact of the Children’s Art Carnival over five decades.

The Harlem’s Children’s Art Carnival (1969-present) was an outgrowth of MoMA’s annual event-based art education series of the same name that was established by MoMA’s founding Education Director, Victor D'Amico, in 1942.

In 1969, MoMA re-imagined the Carnival as a free outreach program in Harlem under the leadership of Betty Blayton-Taylor (1937-2016), an artist (known as Betty Blayton), educator, community activist, and co-founder of the Studio Museum in Harlem.

The panel discussion is moderated by Souleo, the curator of the Wallach Art Gallery exhibition "Children’s Art Carnival in Harlem: The Making of Contemporary Artists,” and considers the Children’s Art Carnival’s origins, its central role in supporting the art of Black and diverse contemporary artists, and leadership in creating a dynamic teaching environment and pedagogical model for community-based arts education.

RSVP and register at wallach.columbia.edu/events, or see Link in bio.

Many thanks to Nicholas Boston, critic and Lehman College (CUNY) professor, for the thoughtful engagement with the curre...
07/27/2026

Many thanks to Nicholas Boston, critic and Lehman College (CUNY) professor, for the thoughtful engagement with the current Wallach exhibition “Children’s Art Carnival in Harlem: The Making of Contemporary Artists” (6/26–9/13/2026).

Calling it "the most alive and colorful exhibition I have seen this year,” Boston examines the history of this seminal Harlem arts organization and the "myriad ways in which the Children’s Art Carnival has created a home for artists, established and emerging alike.”

Read the full review at gaycitynews.com

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