Dreams of This Future: The Collection of Peggy Cooper Cafritz

Dreams of This Future: The Collection of Peggy Cooper Cafritz brings together a selection of paintings, photographs, sculptures, textiles, works on paper, and mixed-media objects from the collection of arts patron, educator, and civil rights activist Peggy Cooper Cafritz. Featuring work by Nina Chanel Abney, Sanford Biggers, Diedrick Brackens, Nick Cave, Noah Davis, Derek Fordjour, Deana Lawson, Simone Leigh, Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Jennifer Packer, Deborah Roberts, Tschabalala Self, and other artists, the exhibition examines Cafritz’s collecting practice as an enduring form of advocacy for artists of African descent. Studio Museum in Harlem, 144 West 125th Street, New York, NY 10027. Opens August 19, 2026 — Runs through February 28, 2027. Cafritz built two major personal art collections during her lifetime. The first was largely destroyed in a devastating fire at her Washington, DC, home in 2009, after which she began collecting again, assembling a second collection during the final seven years of her life. Although her interests extended across generations, media, styles, and geographic regions, both collections reflected a consistent commitment to supporting artists of African descent, particularly artists in the formative stages of their careers. In 2018, Cafritz bequeathed the majority of her collection to the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, the public arts school she cofounded in Washington, DC, in 1974. The Studio Museum received more than four hundred works by over two hundred artists, substantially expanding its permanent collection and introducing work by many artists who had not previously been represented in the museum’s holdings. While individual objects from the gift have appeared in earlier presentations, Dreams of This Future is the first Studio Museum exhibition devoted to telling the story of Cafritz specifically as a collector. The exhibition’s title reflects Cafritz’s understanding of collecting as a means of shaping the cultural landscape that future generations would inherit. She described her pursuit of beauty as, in part, a political act—a position visible in her insistence that Black artists deserved material support, institutional recognition, critical attention, and permanence within museum collections. By purchasing work early, forming sustained relationships with artists, and placing their practices within educational and museum contexts, Cafritz treated patronage as an active investment in Black cultural futures.