EVEN THE OPENING OF “Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces,” an exhibition chronicling the approach, sensibility, and material existence of Linda Goode Bryant’s now-celebrated artist-run space, was itself a legendary scene. Goode Bryant, the dauntless activist, filmmaker, and JAM founder, and Thomas (T.) Jean Lax, the inventive researcher and curator of performance and media at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, danced energetically, face-to-face, in a West African modality before a line of Senegalese drummers. (Lax curated the show with Lilia Rocio Taboada in collaboration with Goode Bryant and
In the hardscrabble New York of the ‘70s, Just Above Midtown Gallery created a model for an art world to come. At MoMA, that experiment has plenty of life.