Frequency Exhibition
The Frequency Exhibition was a contemporary exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem from November 9, 2005 - March 12, 2006. Curated by Thelma Golden and associate curator Christine Y. Kim, the exhibition featured the works of 35 emerging Black artists. Frequency, following the 2001 exhibition "Freestyle," is one of five "F" themed exhibitions alongside Flow, Fore, and Fictions. While curators Golden and Kim point out that Frequency was not "Freestyle II," the organization of artists under the umbrella of Black identity engages with "Post-Black" art similarly to the Freestyle exhibition. Background. Following Freestyle's success in 2001 , Golden felt at first that the necessity of curating a show whose work featured emerging black artists was not as immediate. She states in the "Frequency" brochure: "After the tremendous success of "Freestyle" in 2001, I had both privately and publicly acknowledged that there might no longer be a need for me to organize group shows featuring the works of emerging black artists." While Golden had felt her project had made important strides in addressing a racially oblivious art world composed mainly of white graduate-level educated artists, events like Hurricane Katrina exposed racial tensions and issues of segregation anew . It was in this context that "Frequency" was organized and carried out. Artists featured in "Freestyle" further went on to score gallery positions and art-star status, creating expectations of similar celebrities in the following exhibition. Critical Reception. Frequency is often characterized in relation to the Studio Museum's preceding exhibition Freestyle. Described as veering "between the flashy and the subdued," the exhibition grappled with Black identity through a complex interplay between past and present. Melissa Gronlund, writing for "frieze", saw the exhibition as an overly-ambitious attempt at referencing particular histories and racial stereotypes. Its aesthetic qualities, in her  eyes, did not always reinforce the artistic sincerity of the work; Gronlund found more melancholic artists to be more genuine in their uses of a "craft aesthetic." Writing for The Brooklyn Rail, Nick Stillman also takes note of the exhibition's identity-based conceptual work which goes beyond the creation of iconic imagery. The absence of and working around iconic "black" images reflects the curators' engagement with the "post-black" in this exhibit without a centralizing organizational principle.