Thelma Golden

Born, 1966 in Queens, New York

Thelma Golden is the Executive Director and Chief Curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York.

She provided a text - “Albert Chong: Eye & I” for Ancestral Dialogues: The Photographs of Albert Chong [The Friends of Photography [San Francisco, Untitled 57, 1994]. At the time of writing, Golden was Associate Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art and of the Whitney Museum at Philip Morris.

From Golden’s text: “Photographs are traditionally viewed  as the literal embodiment of what is visible; Albert Chong seeks to make manifest what is invisible. His photographs remind me of things I have never really seen, and yet everything is hauntingly familiar. At some level, experiencing his work involves suspending and confronting the knowledge of science - and believing in the potency of magic. It is the precise intermingling of these two forces which converge to capture the moment and bear its essence. Albert Chong’s photographic practice relies on his mastery of science and his surrender to the sources he seeks to render visible.”

From the inIVA website:

‘Since disrupting the status quo with her 1994 exhibition, Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art, Golden has continued to create challenging dialogues around art and artists, making her one of the most respected curators in America. After ten years at the Whitney Museum of American Art, one of the nation’s premier art institutions, Golden took up a new challenge in 2000, joining the Studio Museum in Harlem and becoming executive director and chief curator in 2005’

A quote from a text by Golden, on Chris Ofili,  was used in the gallery guide accompanying Ofili’s mid-career retrospective at Tate Britain, 27 January - 16 May 2010. That particular text was Thelma Golden and Chris Ofili in Conversation, in Chris Ofili, Rizzoli, 2009.

»  Ancestral Dialogues: The Photographs of Albert Chong

Catalogue relating to an individual, 1994

»  Black Romantic - catalogue

Catalogue relating to an exhibition, 2002

»  Chris Ofili - Tate Britain, Gallery guide

Brochure relating to an exhibition, 2010

»  Chris Ofili | Afro Muses 1995 - 2005

Catalogue relating to an exhibition, 2005

»  Chris Ofili | Within Reach

Catalogue relating to an exhibition, 2003

»  Energy/Experimentation

Catalogue relating to an exhibition, 2006

»  Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Any Number of Preoccupations

Catalogue relating to an exhibition, 2010

»  Yinka Shonibare (Studio Museum in Harlem)

Catalogue relating to an exhibition, 2002