In 1969, the Metropolitan Museum of Art organized an exhibition called “Harlem on My Mind.” It was meant to respond to the Civil Rights movement and to celebrate the city of Harlem, but strangely it included no art by powerful Black painters and collagists who were living and working in Harlem at the time: Romare Bearden, Faith Ringgold, Jacob Lawrence, to name three. Instead the show featured photographs and newspaper clippings from the period. Now, more than 50 years later, the Met has organized a scholarly exploration of the dynamic Harlem Renaissance, which dates from 1918 to 1937. The exhibition not only honors the neighborhood that produced Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, and William Johnson, it looks at the cultural effects of the Great Migration, and argues that the Harlem Renaissance, and its development of the modern Black subject, is “central to the development of international modern art.” —Elena Clavarino