CHEEYEON PARK | DATE 1/30/2023

Artbook @ MoMA PS1 presents the book celebration and signing of 'Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces'

Monday, January 30, at 4 PM, Artbook @ MoMA PS1 Bookstore presents the book celebration and signing of Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces, published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and The Studio Museum in Harlem on the occasion of the exhibition at MoMA on view through February 18, 2023. Please join us for a round table conversation with Linda Goode Bryant, Kimberly Varella, Thomas (T.) Jean Lax and Lilia Rocio Taboada. Pre-order SIGNED books here and RSVP for the event here. RSVP is required due to limited capacity. This event will also be livestreamed on IG @artbookps1.

Linda Goode Bryant is the founder of Just Above Midtown (JAM). With Kimberly Varella, designer of the exhibition catalogue, and Thomas (T.) Jean Lax and Lilia Rocio Taboada, who co-organized the MoMA exhibition, this book celebration will revolve around the design of the book and the myriad of archival materials used in the book, including archives of Black artist publications involved with JAM.

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 has and continues to advocate for a connection to "our innate ability to use what we have to create what we need."

Kimberly Varella is an artist, graphic designer, and founder of the award-winning Los Angeles-based design studio Content Object—a content-driven, object-oriented studio specializing in book design. Varella’s practice builds from a foundation of printmaking, durational methodologies and conceptual art—teetering the lines between play, resistance, academia, formalism and a distinct take on materiality.

Thomas (T.) Jean Lax is a writer and curator specializing in Black art and performance. They curated the exhibition Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces (2022) with Lilia Rocio Taboada in collaboration with JAM’s founder, Linda Goode Bryant and Marielle Ingram. Prior to MoMA, they worked at the Studio Museum in Harlem. A native New Yorker, Lax holds degrees in Africana studies and art history from Brown and Columbia universities and is a PhD candidate in performance studies at New York University.

Lilia Rocio Taboada is a writer and curator based in Brooklyn. She is currently Curatorial Assistant at MoMA, where she worked closely with Thomas (T.) Jean Lax in collaboration with Linda Goode Bryant and Marielle Ingram on the exhibition Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces and is co-editor of the accompanying exhibition catalogue. She has worked at arts institutions across New York, California, and Texas, contributing research and writing focused on the intersections of art and performance since the 1960s, archival research, and critical race theory.