"HARLEM ON MY MIND: CULTURAL CAPITAL OF BLACK AMERICA” REVISITED

From Steven Heller's WEEKEND HELLER column in PRINT magazine. 

"Last week, Holland Carter in The New York Times wrote a recollection of the famously and harshly criticized Metropolitan Museum of Art 1969 exhibit “Harlem On My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America.” Curated by Allon Schoener, cultural historian and organizer of exhibitions that focus on topics such as African Americans, Italian Americans, Jewish Americans and the history of the Lower East Side, it was a courageous yet politically charged, and criticized, attempt to represent the black experience in the citadel of art. Black artists were up-in-arms over the employ of a white curator and whites were offended by the catalog, which contained an essay by a 17-year-old high school student that was “laced with anti-Semitic slurs …”