In 2021, The Studio Museum of Harlem and the Metropolitan Museum of Art jointly acquired the archives of seminal 20th-century photographer James Van Der Zee. Van Der Zee was the foremost portraitist operating in Harlem, New York City, and his work presents an encyclopedic chronicle of The Harlem Renaissance, the flowering of art, music, and literature centered in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s. This portfolio, published in Van Der Zee’s lifetime in 1974, presents a compelling cross-section of his work.
James Van Der Zee is a featured artist in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's current exhibition entitled The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism.