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Alumnae Stories

Linda Goode Bryant, C'72

October 2022

Linda Goode Bryant Award-winning documentary filmmaker, activist, entrepreneur, farmer, artist,  and unstoppable force, Linda Goode Bryant, C’72, continues to be a force of nature and creative inspiration to contemporary Black artists. Works from her gallery Just Above Midtown (JAM) – opened from 1974 to 1986 in New York City – will be reintroduced in a feature exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) until Feb. 18, 2023.

Following her time at Spelman, Goode Bryant was a fellow at MoMA while working in the education department at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Experiencing the gap in the city’s contemporary art landscape led to opening an art gallery, specifically meant to showcase the work of excluded Black artists and artists of color.

Goode Bryant has not only set the foundation for some of the most successful contemporary artists of color – including Lorraine O’Grady and Senga Nengudi – but remains an avid advocate for "our innate ability to use what we have to create what we need."