Ahead of its public reopening on November 15, the Studio Museum in Harlem showed off its new building to the press on Thursday, revealing a multitude of treasures that have entered its holdings since its closure in 2018—including the first Jean-Michel Basquiat painting to join the museum’s collection.
The painting, titled Bayou (1984), was gifted to the New York museum in 2023 by the financier Joseph Perella and his wife Amy. Joseph was a mentor to Raymond J. McGuire, an investment banking executive and an ARTnews Top 200 Collector who serves as the Studio Museum’s board chair.
While a Basquiat in a museum setting may hardly raise a brow, this is a landmark acquisition because few other institutions in the US own paintings by the artist.
The Museum of Modern Art, for example, has in the past shown a painting by Basquiat, Glenn (1985), but always as a loan from an unidentified collector—the museum does not own the piece. Critic Bob Nickas called the loan “a very public announcement that a Basquiat is absent from the museum’s holdings, an enticement for owners and donors who may come forth—or come to the rescue, as it were.” One such donor appears to have done just not that, not at MoMA but at the Studio Museum.
The Whitney Museum, on the other hand, has frequently shown its prized Basquiat, a 1983 painting called Hollywood Africans, since acquiring the piece in the ’80s. The Metropolitan Museum of Art appears to only have gained its first Basquiat paintings in 2021.
A bit about Bayou: the painting features a partially rendered multiplication table, scrawled words such as “WASTEWATER” and “SOUTH,” and a slender hand. Those references to water and the South may relate to Basquiat’s time spent in New Orleans, along the Mississippi River. Bayou was likely featured in 1985 at Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, the Zurich enterprise that helped make Basquiat internationally famous, and has now found a permanent home in Basquiat’s hometown.
