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Harlem Stage, the local performing arts center, is marking the end of an era as its CEO and Artistic Director Patricia Cruz steps down from her position, closing the chapter on a 25-year legacy of artistic innovation and representation.

“This is at a point where we’re celebrating the incredible achievements that the institution has had in the past, and looking to what will happen in the future with excitement and real enthusiasm for the change that’s in front of us,” said Cruz. 

The performing arts center on Convent Avenue supports artists of color through various programs and opportunities. Cruz is responsible for pioneering efforts to restore the building, an achievement she views with utmost pride. 

“The most important thing that I’ve been able to do was to lead the campaign that we did in 1998 when I first came, which was to restore the Harlem Stage gatehouse,” she said, “Our facility is our chief treasure. It is the place where our community gathers, where artists are able to make very important work.” 

Several other initiatives have emerged under Cruz’s leadership, including the commissioning program WaterWorks and the dance series E-Moves.

WaterWorks plays a crucial role in supporting artists financially, allowing them to create new art and connect with the community through residencies and educational activities.

“People have this misunderstanding that just because you know an artist’s name means they’ve got money, money, money rolling in,” said Courtney Lee Mitchell, president of the Harlem Stage Board of Directors.

Mitchell started working for Harlem Stage eight years ago, over a decade after Cruz assumed her position. She found Cruz’s influence—known for providing spaces for artists of color and representing of Harlem’s cultural diversity—easily observable 

“I think both in terms of the artists that we present, as well as the audiences that we’re working with, we are a community,” Cruz said. “And that community is diverse in terms of age, in terms of economic standing, in terms of racial identity, and the places that they come from. And we’re living in a Harlem that is rapidly changing as well.” 

Yet the organization never loses sight of its original priority—the Black community. 

“While we’re being inclusive and making sure that we include other groups of color into what we do, [we’re] also remembering our foundation and the African diaspora that exists in Harlem, and never forgetting that component of who we are at Harlem Stage,” said Mitchell.

Craig Harris, a trombonist who’s been with Harlem Stage for 40 years, praised Cruz for her sincere diversity efforts, contrasting them with the performative diversity of other organizations. 

“[At] a lot of organizations, there’s an insincere sense of diversity—I’m talking about the most prestigious organizations in the world. They need some African people in February, and they need some women in March,” said Harris. “[At Harlem Stage], I have a home, and I know people are sincere about the work and that they’re very sincere about the work and my growth.”

Cruz’s transition comes in the middle of the organization’s strategic five-year plan, which details the succession process. The plan includes a Succession Committee that is responsible for facilitating the transition and raising $25 million to support programming and staffing. 

The organization will announce Cruz’s successor at its 40th Anniversary Gala on June 3, 2024. 

“We always thought that this would be a good time for me to step aside and bring new leadership and look to the future of our incredible institution,” said Cruz.

Cruz will take a smaller advisory role within the organization on officially stepping down in July, offering her continued guidance and influence as the organization navigates its next chapter.

For more info, visit www.harlemstage.org.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Faith Ringgold, an award-winning author and artist who broke down barriers for Black female artists and became famous for her richly colored and detailed quilts combining painting, textiles and storytelling, has died. She was 93.

The artist’s assistant, Grace Matthews, told The Associated Press that Ringgold died Friday night at her home in Englewood, New Jersey. Matthews said Ringgold had been in failing health.

Ringgold’s highly personal works of art can be found in private and public collections around the country and beyond, from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American Art to New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Atlanta’s High Museum of Fine Art. But her rise to prominence as a Black artist wasn’t easy in an art world dominated by white males and in a political cultural where Black men were the leading voices for civil rights. A founder in 1971 of the Where We At artists collective for Black women, Ringgold became a social activist, frequently protesting the lack of representation of Black and female artists in American museums.

“I became a feminist out of disgust for the manner in which women were marginalized in the art world,” she told The New York Times in 2019. “I began to incorporate this perspective into my work, with a particular focus on Black women as slaves and their sexual exploitation.”

In her first illustrated children’s book, “Tar Beach,” the spirited heroine takes flight over the George Washington Bridge. The story symbolized women’s self-realization and freedom to confront “this huge masculine icon — the bridge,” she explained.

The story is based on her narrative quilt of the same name now in the permanent collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

While her works often deal with issues of race and gender, their folk-like style is vibrant, optimistic and lighthearted and often reminiscent of her warm memories of her life in Harlem.

Ringgold introduced quilting into her work in the 1970s after seeing brocaded Tibetan paintings called thangkas. They inspired her to create patchwork fabric borders, or frames, with handwritten narrative around her canvas acrylic paintings. For her 1982 story quilt, “Who’s Afraid of Aunt Jemina,” Ringgold confronted the struggles of women by undermining the Black “mammy” stereotype and telling the story of a successful African American businesswoman called Jemima Blakey.

“Aunt Jemima conveys the same negative connotation as Uncle Tom, simply because of her looks,” she told The New York Times in a 1990 interview.

Soon after, Ringgold produced a series of 12 quilt paintings titled “The French Collection,” again weaving narrative, biographical and African American cultural references and Western art.

One of the works in the series, “Dancing at the Louvre,” depicts Ringgold’s daughters dancing in the Paris museum, seemingly oblivious to the “Mona Lisa” and other European masterpieces on the walls. In other works in the series Ringgold depicts giants of Black culture like poet Langston Hughes alongside Pablo Picasso and other European masters.

Among her socially conscious works is a three-panel “9/11 Peace Story Quilt” that Ringgold designed and constructed in collaboration with New York City students for the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Each of the panels contains 12 squares with pictures and words that address the question “what will you do for peace?” It was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

In 2014, her “Groovin High,” a depiction of a crowded energetic dance hall evocative of Harlem’s famous Savoy Ballroom, was featured on a billboard along New York City’s High Line park.

Ringgold also created a number of public works. “People Portraits,” comprised of 52 individual glass mosaics representing figures in sports, performance and music, adorns the Los Angeles Civic Center subway station. “Flying Home: Harlem Heroes and Heroines” are two mosaic murals in a Harlem subway station that feature figures like Dinah Washington, Sugar Ray Robinson and Malcolm X.

In one of her recent books, “Harlem Renaissance Party,” Ringgold introduces young readers to Hughes and other Black artists of the 1920s. Other children’s books have featured Rosa Parks, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Underground Railroad.

Born in Harlem in 1930, Ringgold was the daughter of a seamstress and dress designer with whom she collaborated often. She attended City College of New York where she earned bachelor and master’s degrees in art. She was a professor of art at the University of California in San Diego from 1987 until 2002.

Ringgold’s motto, posted on her website, states: “If one can, anyone can, all you gotta do is try.”

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* This article was originally published here