Save the date: November 15, 2025. The Studio Museum reopens with Community Day, Tom Lloyd, and a café by Settepani.
The Studio Museum in Harlem has set the date. On Saturday, November 15, the institution will open the doors of its new 82,000-square-foot building on 125th Street and throw a Community Day that takes over the entire site. Free admission, programming for all ages, and a first look at the galleries will mark the return.
Built by Adjaye Associates with Cooper Robertson as executive architect, the seven-story structure doubles space for exhibitions and the Artist-in-Residence program, and adds nearly 70 percent more indoor and outdoor public areas. Plan on a rooftop terrace created by Studio Zewde and a ground-floor café run by Harlem favorite Settepani.
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The opening season centers on a survey of Tom Lloyd, the pioneering artist whose work headlined the museum’s very first exhibition in 1968. Alongside it comes the first rotation from the permanent collection, now nearly nine thousand works, plus a presentation of new works on paper by more than one hundred alumni of the Artist-in-Residence program and an archival dive into the museum’s own history. Two commissions lead the building’s new era: a sonic sculptural installation by Camille Norment and a metal-based work by Christopher Myers in the Education Workshops.
Some of the museum’s most beloved pieces return to view. David Hammons’s red, black, and green flag will fly again, Glenn Ligon’s Give Us a Poem will flash its neon, and Houston E. Conwill’s time capsules The Joyful Mysteries wait for their September 2034 opening. The Studio Store will launch with a Glenn Ligon collaboration and a new collection handbook, Meaning Matter Memory, published by Phaidon.
Hours will run Wednesday through Sunday, 11 am to 6 pm, with late nights on Friday and Saturday until 9 pm. Admission is suggested pricing, Sundays are free for everyone, and children sixteen and under are always free. Tickets will be available online and on site.
If it feels like a long time coming, it is. The museum closed in 2018 to clear the way for a multimillion-dollar expansion, a seven-year rebuild that now lands with a firm November date.
Harlem has never lacked a scene. What it gets this fall is a house that can hold it, from terrace to stoop-like steps out front, ready for conversations, performances, and the kind of cross-town traffic that starts in a gallery and ends in a neighborhood spot.
