Image: Rose Art Museum, Waltham
The Studio Museum in Harlem will open 'Dreams of This Future: The Collection of Peggy Cooper Cafritz' on August 19, 2026, presenting a selection of works from the collector’s historic gift to the museum. The exhibition will run through February 28, 2027, and focuses on Cafritz’s lifelong commitment to artists of African descent across painting, photography, sculpture, textiles, and works on paper.
According to the museum, the exhibition is the first to tell a story of Cafritz as an art collector. Cafritz, who lived from 1947 to 2018, was an arts patron, educator, and civil rights activist. She bequeathed the majority of her art collection to the Studio Museum in Harlem and to the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, DC, which she cofounded in 1974. The museum notes that although it has shown dozens of works from the collection in the years since receiving the gift, this presentation is the first to frame the collection through Cafritz’s collecting practice.
Cafritz built two collections during her lifetime. The first was largely destroyed in a 2009 fire; the second was amassed in the seven years before her death. The museum says both collections reflected her commitment to artists of African descent and to supporting artists early in their careers. In a statement quoted on the exhibition page, Cafritz described one aspect of her approach as a “relentless search for beauty,” which “has always been, in part, a political act.”
The bequest included more than 400 works by more than 200 artists of African descent, many of whom had not previously been represented in the Studio Museum’s collection. The exhibition will show only a small fraction of that gift, but it spans a range of media and highlights the breadth of Cafritz’s collecting. Artists named by the museum include Nina Chanel Abney, Sanford Biggers, Diedrick Brackens, Nick Cave, Elizabeth Colomba, Noah Davis, Emory Douglas, Derek Fordjour, Hassan Hajjaj, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Titus Kaphar, Deana Lawson, Simone Leigh, Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, Jackie Nickerson, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Jennifer Packer, Deborah Roberts, Tschabalala Self, and Saya Woolfalk.
The exhibition is organized by Connie H. Choi, curator, and Kiki Teshome, curatorial assistant. The Studio Museum says it is grateful to the Cafritz family for supporting the exhibition. The museum is located at 144 West 125th Street in New York, and the exhibition page identifies the show’s venue simply as the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Support for the Studio Museum in Harlem’s exhibition program is provided by the Alice L. Walton Foundation Exhibitions Endowment, with additional funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts, with support from the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. The exhibition opens in New York on August 19, 2026.
