Linda Goode Bryant

Linda Goode Bryant, founder of Just Above Midtown and Project EATS in conversation with Thomas (T.) Lax, co-organizing curator of Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces at the Museum of Modern Art

Foundation To-Life Arthur and Carol Kaufman Goldberg Curatorial Lecture
Wednesday February 8 at 7pm
Roosevelt House
47-49 East 65th Street, New York, NY

Linda Goode Bryant’s decades of art-based activism began with her founding of Just Above Midtown gallery (JAM), a self-described laboratory that foregrounded the work of African American artists. After closing JAM, Goode Bryant dedicated herself to filmmaking. Over her nearly 50-year career, Goode Bryant continues to advocate for a connection to “our innate ability to use what we have to create what we need.” Most recently, Goode Bryant has founded Project EATS, a “living installation” of neighborhood-based, small-plot, high-yield farms that use art, urban agriculture, partnerships, and social enterprise to sustainably grow and equitably distribute fresh, local, organically grown food in communities across New York City.

Thomas (T.) Jean Lax is a curator, writer, and scholar specializing in Black art and performance. At the Museum of Modern Art, they co-organized the exhibition Just Above Midtown: 1974 to the Present (2022) with Lilia Rocio Taboada in collaboration with JAM’s founder Linda Goode Bryant. In 2019, they worked with colleagues across MoMA on a major rehang of its collection and co-organized the exhibition Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done (2018) with Ana Janevski and Martha Joseph. Their other collaboratively-organized exhibitions include the Projects Series for emerging artists; Unfinished Conversations, inspired by the cultural theorist Stuart Hall; the contemporary art quintennial, Greater New York; and commissions with artists including Neïl Beloufa, Maria Hassabi, and Steffani Jemison. Previously, they worked at The Studio Museum in Harlem for seven years, where they organized When the Stars Begin to Fall: Imagination and the American South and participated in the landmark “f show” contemporary art series.

Goode Bryant photo: Oresti Tsonopoulos
Thomas (T.) Jean Lax © 2021 The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo: Peter Ross

The Foundation To-Life, Inc. Arthur and Carol Kaufman Goldberg Curatorial Lectures bring curators of international stature to the Hunter campus to engage with students in the MA program in Art History and the MFA program in Studio Art, and with the broader Hunter community. Previous Goldberg Curators have included Ann Goldstein, Hamza Walker, Fabrice Stroun, Valerie Cassel Oliver, Omar Kholeif, Pablo Helguera, Lynne Cooke, and Koyo Kouoh.