about us

Welcome to the Harlem Art Gallery. I am Akivah Northern, Baba’s widow and I am very pleased to finally be able to share some of my husband’s precious remaining works of art with you. What you will see in this exhibit is the work of a multi-generational artist who was committed to the beauty, pain, and majesty of Black life and Black people. On December 5, 2024, Babatunde (Baba) Folayemi’s (1940-2012) family revived the Harlem Art Gallery as an online gallery to share the artistic creations of Black artists. Our first exhibition is titled Sacred Fine Art. This exhibit showcases some of the sacred fine art of artist Baba, one of the founders of the Harlem Black Art Movement and the original Harlem ArtGallery located in 1968-1972 on 7th Avenue and 126th Street.

For many generations, biblical stories have inspired artists to create fine art. In 16th-century Europe, during the Italian “High Renaissance” artist Michelangelo created art that would change how Adam, Moses, David, and even God were viewed for generations. Commissioned by Pope Julius II to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican in Rome, Michelangelo appropriated biblical stories, and his Euro-centric portrayals have become the standards by which many still view biblical characters.

However, some believers in Jesus could not identify with these images. One of them was a young black boy who was born and grew up in Harlem. His name was Babatunde Folayemi (Baba). Baba wanted to encounter people who looked like him when he looked at the art in the Catholic church and school he attended and when he read Bible stories.

This desire became crucial to Baba and even as a teenager, some of his paintings were of Jesus from Baba’s own vivid, artistic imagination. The desire lasted a lifetime and before Baba’s untimely death in 2012, from a sudden heart attack, he painted seventy-two new works which make up only one of his series of Sacred Fine Art. Paintings from two of Baba’s sacred fine art series are exhibited here and are only a part of a larger collection of Baba’s fine art from six decades.