Lorna Simpson’s Brooklyn studio space includes a double-height great room that leads to the rear garden. The dining table is staged with Skeleton chairs designed by David Adjaye for Knoll. | Courtesy The Corcoran Group
A SURVEY EXHIBITION showcasing the painting practice of Lorna Simpson is currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. As the introduction to the show notes, Simpson “came to prominence in the early 1990s,” producing works across photography, film, and video that “probe the nature of images and how they construct meaning.”
Her pioneering conceptual practice continues to explore gender, race, identity, representation, and history, but her medium has shifted. A decade ago the artist began to transform her practice, focusing on large-scale paintings. Bridging figuration and abstraction, the compositions draw on images from vintage Ebony and Jet magazines and other archives. “Lorna Simpson: Source Notes,” the first exhibition to explore the full arc of her venture into painting, is open at The Met through Nov. 30.
Simpson first began making the atmospheric paintings in a studio in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, built to her specifications. The striking, four-story property boasts nearly 3,300-square-feet of flexible space. Commissioned by Simpson and her then-husband artist James Casebere, the 22-foot wide modern-minimalist building was designed by Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye of Adjaye Associates.
Located at 208 Vanderbilt Avenue, the property hit the market in July. The asking price is $6.5 million. Leslie Marshall of the Corcoran Group is handling the sale with Nick Hovsepian.
Adjaye embarked upon the design in 2003 and the project was completed in 2006. The townhouse-style property includes three bedrooms, two-and-a-half bathrooms, a double-height great room, and a sizable garden space in the rear. The building could be utilized as a live/work studio space and is also suitable as a single-family residence.
According to the listing, the property offers “soaring proportions, thoughtful flexibility, and stunning natural light” and a “rare blend of privacy, presence, and possibility.” The design also features a nearly all-glass rear facade, seven sky-lights, and custom millwork throughout the interior, including floor-to-ceiling bookcases.
Simpson has said she always dreamed of having a studio in Brooklyn, where she grew up. Pratt Institute and Fort Greene Park are a few blocks away, and The Hill, the athletic facility for St. Joseph’s University is next door. She embarked upon the project because existing options didn’t meet her needs, she said.
“I could not find something that I liked that felt spacious and that did not feel like a tight traditional townhouse domestic space with limited free-wall space,” Simpson wrote in an email to The New York Times.
Located at 208 Vanderbilt Avenue in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, the studio space was designed by David Adjaye. (The architect of record was David Hotson Architects.) | Courtesy The Corcoran Group
The building served as Simpson’s working studio and she was also generous with the space, opening it up for an array of events. Over the years, she hosted poetry readings, book launches, holiday parties, and more. The artist told the Times, she had “great memories” of the gatherings, which were “well attended” and “lots of fun and joy.”
Pursuing her ongoing practice, Simpson works out of a larger, nearby commercial space now. The Vanderbilt Avenue property is no longer her primary studio. For several years, the building has functioned as an archive and storage site where the artist continued to host and entertain.
THE BROOKLYN STUDIO was Adjaye’s first project in the United States. Up to that point, the architect had designed a number of critically recognized projects in Europe and Africa, was fast-rising in the field, arguably the best-known Black architect in the world, and a regular collaborator with artists on exhibition designs and their home/studio spaces.
Adjaye named the project “Pitch Black,” literally describing the visual profile of the building, which he clad on the front and side facades with black polypropylene panels. Moody and modern, the studio stood in stark contrast to the surrounding red brick buildings on the block, including an adjacent Lombardian Romanesque-style church constructed in 1890 that has been home to a French-speaking Baptist congregation since the mid-1960s.
At the outset, the dark exterior gave way to a bright interior flooded with natural light reflecting off the white walls. Two decades after its completion, the facade is no longer black. The exterior panels have lost their color over the years. It is unclear whether the drastic change in the appearance of the material was expected or intended. Adjaye Associates did not reply to an email inquiry. Marshall, the real estate broker, said, “The panels were original almost black but have faded over time and are now a lighter gray.”
The Brooklyn studio was David Adjaye’s first project in the United States. “The experience of developing this project, together with a number of collaborations with artists, underpinned the presentations that resulted in his winning” the commission for the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver.
The interior features include built-in bookcases and flexible spaces. This one is staged as a bedroom. | Courtesy The Corcoran Group
Several volumes have been published about Adjaye’s projects. “David Adjaye: Form, Heft, Material” (2015) accompanied a traveling exhibition organized by Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany, and the Art Institute of Chicago, that also traveled to the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, Russia.
The most extensive survey of the architect considered more than 30 projects and was co-curated by Okwui Enwezor (1963-2019), then director of Haus de Kunst, and Zoë Ryan, who is now director of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Writing in the catalog, Ryan contextualized the significance of Pitch Black.
“The development of Adjaye’s work has followed a similar trajectory in several locations. In London, his first independent buildings were relatively small studio-houses within walking distance of his then-office. Taking leads from the history and culture of the area, it was not long before he was designing public buildings, dispersed over a somewhat wider area but still within close range of the office,” Ryan wrote.
“In the United States, the thread that connected his early projects was that of contemporary art. His first commission, in 2003, was for a double-studio building on an infill site in Brooklyn, known as Pitch Black. The experience of developing this project, together with a number of collaborations with artists, underpinned the presentations that resulted in his winning the commissions for LN House in Denver, Colo., and MCAD (Museum of Contemporary Art Denver), his first public building North America.”
The “Form, Heft, Material” exhibition explored Adjaye’s collaborations with various artists, including Julie Mehretu, Chris Ofili, and Casebere and Simpson. In a video about their collaboration, Simpson reflected on the architect’s design for her studio.
“David’s buildings do have this kind of presence. Where ever they are, they have a particular kind of presence and in that they always kind of are cloaked, in a way. They don’t give a narrative of what this is. People pass by this building and they literally touch it because they go, ‘What is that?’ Or, if I’m standing in front, ‘What goes on in there?'” Simpson said.
“It would be presumptuous of me to say that this building had anything to do with me, personally, in terms of its look and kind of what it is. This is all David. But in that, I think the building is also his response to, and like as sit here in front of this window, which kind of has a kind of 6 x 9 format lens or view of these kind of backyards, part of this is really incredible because that is speaking to the kind of work that I do. So the conversation I guess that takes place is his observation of me as an artist, but then also his observations about light and space as they present themselves at this site.” CT
In 2015, Lorna Simpson reflects on the “incredible” form and function of her Brooklyn studio designed by architect David Adjaye. | Video by Signature Films Frankfurt
The many design features include extensive millwork and floor-to-ceiling bookcases. | Courtesy The Corcoran Group
The interior spaces are flexible in terms of use and feature extensive millwork and sky lights. | Courtesy The Corcoran Group
The open kitchen is outfitted with a concrete countertop. | Courtesy The Corcoran Group
The interiors include office/work space. | Courtesy The Corcoran Group
A nearly all-glass, rear facade connects the interior space to the rear garden. | Courtesy The Corcoran Group
The rear garden provides more than 800-square-feet of outdoor space and features a flowering crape myrtle and Japanese pine trees. | Courtesy The Corcoran Group
BOOKSHELF
“Lorna Simpson: Source Notes” was published on the occasion of the artist’s exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The catalog is authored by exhibition curator Lauren Rosati with contributions by Hilton Als, David Breslin, and Adrienne Edwards. “Lorna Simpson,” a major monograph from Phaidon, and “Lorna Simpson Collages” also explore her work.
