‘Fore’ at Studio Museum in Harlem - NYTimes.com: In 2001 the Studio Museum in Harlem opened a group exhibition called “Freestyle,” the first in what would be a series intended to introduce freshly minted African-American talent. And in the catalog for that show the curator, Thelma Golden, dropped a neat little cultural bomb. She referred to the group of artists she’d chosen, most of them then in their 20s, as “post-black.”
Heads spun, and are still spinning. Artists of an older generation, particularly those deeply invested in lifelong issues of black pride, were angry. The handle-hungry art market was flummoxed, unsure of how to capitalize on the label.
Even some young artists to whom it was applied weren’t quite clear about what to do with it. Overnight the dynamics of contemporary art changed.
