David Antonio Cruz’s Solo Exhibition When the Children Come Home at Sugar Hill Children’s Museum Celebrates the Concept of Chosen Families
Exhibition Dates: September 10, 2024 – February 16, 2025
Location: Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art and Storytelling (Sugar Hill Museum), 898 St Nicholas Ave, New York, NY
Harlem, New York—The Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art & Storytelling (Sugar Hill Museum) is pleased to announce a major solo exhibition this Fall dedicated to the work of multidisciplinary artist David Antonio Cruz. On view from September 10, 2024, through February 16, 2025, When the Children Come Home is curated by Monique Long and is an exploration into the dynamics of homecoming, building upon a decade-long conversation on issues of art and belonging between Cruz and Long, both from the same neighborhood in Philadelphia and now residents of Harlem. This will be the second iteration of the exhibition, which originally opened at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania in Fall 2023.
When the Children Come Home explores themes of home and meditates on an expansive definition of familial connection through over thirty paintings, works on paper, and objects. The exhibition presents a dynamic selection of works made over the past two decades, including three new paintings and drawings that debuted at ICA Philly. The works include the monumental painting "Puerto Rican Pieta en la calle de la Fortaleza" (2006), on loan from El Museo del Barrio (NY). The centerpiece of the exhibition is an immersive site-specific installation in the museum’s Living Room Gallery filled with wallpaper, furnishings, chandeliers, and other performance objects that echo the formal characteristics of the paintings on view.
Charlene Melville, BHC/Sugar Hill Children's Museum Executive Director, explains, “The exhibition is an extension of the work and mission of the museum and our umbrella nonprofit, Broadway Housing Communities. In a space where many have recreated and rebuilt their families, it highlights the resilience and enduring bonds that form beyond traditional definitions. The work evokes joy and resilience, affirming that lifelong connections can transcend shared DNA.” The Museum plans to collaborate with David and Monique on programming to engage child-centric audiences in understanding the diverse nature of human connection—spanning ages, orientations, and both biological and chosen families.
Works from Cruz’s ongoing chosenfamily series, conceived during the COVID-19 lockdown as a visual record of queer chosen families in the US, are prominently featured. Begun at the height of the pandemic, when structures of home, family, and safe spaces took on heightened significance and reevaluation, the project explores how enduring interpersonal relationships can serve as resilient sources of hope and support. These large, colorful works expand on Western traditions of portraiture while conjuring themes of queer joy, resilience, play, ancestry, and belonging.
Long states, “The exhibition is organized around the multiplicities of kinship and other motifs found throughout the artist’s oeuvre. Cruz’s painterly figures collapse and coalesce with layers of vibrant fashion, the articulation of limbs, and dancerly gestures that convey intimacy and love. The artist often portrays himself, his friends (many of whom are artists themselves), and relatives situated in domestic landscapes. In group portraits, the figures abide with one another as if Cruz is building an installation with their bodies.”
David states, “After the debut of When the Children Come Home in our hometown of Philadelphia, the exhibition traveling to New York was especially meaningful because a large number of the works in the exhibition are actually about both cities. Indeed, much of the ideas and works in the show were created here. Our hope is that it will allow visitors and the community to engage in the work and the meaning of family.”
As a continuation of his chosenfamily series, David Antonio Cruz will present his third solo show at Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago, come close, like before, opening on September 13, 2024.
About David Antonio Cruz. David Antonio Cruz (b. 1974, Philadelphia, PA) explores the intersectionality of queerness and race through painting, drawing, sculpture, and performance. His work has been shown in numerous venues, including El Museo del Barrio, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Ford Foundation, Brooklyn Museum, Zuckerman Museum of Art in Georgia, Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, New England Triennial, Museum of the African Diaspora, McNay Art Museum, and Kemper Art Museum. He has been awarded several residencies and fellowships, including the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, LMCC Workspace Residency, Gateway Project Spaces, BRIC Workspace Residency, and the Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellowship.
Born in Philadelphia to Puerto Rican parents, Cruz received a BFA in Painting from Pratt Institute and an MFA from Yale University. He also attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and completed the AIM Program at the Bronx Museum, New York. Cruz lives and works in New York City, where he is an Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Columbia School of the Arts, Columbia University, New York.
About the Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art & Storytelling. The Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling is a contemporary art institution specifically programmed for children and designed to engage all family members in moments of discovery, creation, and connection. The museum invites visitors of all ages to experience the work of important legacy, contemporary, and emerging artists, to explore their own creative interests in our well-equipped art-making facilities, and to connect through our storytelling programs.
Primarily serving children ages 3-8, our museum—through interactive exhibitions, a site-specific artist in residency program, storytelling, and public programming—supports the cognitive and creative growth of children, ignites the joy of creativity, and encourages intergenerational community building.
Since opening, the museum has hosted many of today’s leading cultural figures and has exhibited works from celebrated international artists, including Faith Ringgold, Ana Mendieta, Chester Higgins, Derek Fordjour, Deborah Willis, and Nina Chanel Abney, and have hosted Grammy-nominated social justice artist Fyütch, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Len Cabral, and Nina Crews, among others, to lead storytime. Alumni from the artist residency program have gone on to produce works exhibited and acquired at major institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Bronx Botanical Gardens.