Harlem on My Mind protest

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The Harlem on My Mind protests were a series of protest actions in New York, organized by the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC) in early 1969 in response to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America. The exhibition, focused on the Harlem Renaissance and intended as the museum's first show exploring the cultural achievements and contributions of African Americans, was heavily criticized by black audiences for not actually including any art by black artists, instead presenting documentary photographs and murals of the Harlem neighborhood, and for the exhibition's inclusion of several racist and anti-Semitic statements. The BECC - a group of African-American contemporary artists and activists that formed in response to the exhibition - organized a series of boycotts and protests outside and inside the museum before and after the show opened, leading to national news coverage and a series of institutional responses from the museum.

The protests were followed by a heightened period of black activism within the art world, including several protests and boycotts at other New York museums in the following years. The events have also been cited by art historians as a key moment in the history of American art for the long-term impacts they had on museums' approaches to supporting and exhibiting art by African Americans.^[1]