Mark Bradford's Alphabet at the Studio Museum

Twenty-six sheets of paper, each carrying one letter, are on view in Harlem. Mark Bradford: Untitled (A-Z), 2010 is on view at the Studio Museum in Harlem through Jan. 3, 2027. Artguide lists an Oct. 1 start, while the museum's Sept. 30 release says it had recently opened. The installation presents all 26 works on paper in the series, which grows out of Bradford's ongoing merchant posters, and it arrives just before the artist appears in a major MoMA PS1 show on abstraction by Black artists.

What the work is

The museum's description says Bradford collects local business advertisements in his South Los Angeles neighborhood. He layers the posted signs and sands them down, abstracting their original messages, which included phrases like Stop Evictions and Affordable Daycare, until only fragments remain. The result is twenty-six individual works, each depicting a single letter of the English alphabet.

By isolating the letters from their original context, the museum says, they become more symbolic than functional, alluding to the social and economic systems that affect the people in the neighborhood where the materials were found. The installation is organized by Yelena Keller, associate curator, according to the museum's September 30 press release, which calls it a revisit of a major body of work.

Why the letters matter

An alphabet is the most basic public language, and the posters Bradford used were public language of a particular kind: small-business signs, notices and appeals, pasted on walls where residents pass daily. Turning them into letters removes the message and keeps the material. What viewers see is not a sentence but the residue of many sentences, which is a fair summary of the museum's own explanation. We offer that reading as interpretation, not as the artist's stated intent.

The new building

The show is in the Studio Museum's new home on West 125th Street, which opened Nov. 15, 2025. The press release says it was designed by Adjaye Associates with Corgan as executive architect, and that it is the first building created expressly for the institution's program. Bradford's alphabet is one of several presentations that opened as the museum finished its inaugural year there, alongside Tone, a group show of artists including Roy DeCarava, Kerry James Marshall and Lorna Simpson, and Geometries, which includes Julie Mehretu.

What comes next: Hard Art

On Nov. 5, MoMA PS1 in Long Island City opens Hard Art, which examines the legacy of abstract painting by Black artists in the United States from 1969 to the present. The museum's press release, dated March 19, says it features over forty artists and pairs historical paintings by figures who came to prominence in the 1970s with recent practices that incorporate sculpture, video, sound and painting. Bradford, listed as born in 1961, appears among the first named artists, alongside Frank Bowling, Peter Bradley, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Ed Clark and Melvin Edwards. Connie Butler, the museum's director, organized it with Sheldon Gooch.

The checklist is long, and the release does not say which Bradford works will appear, so we make no claims about them. It does show how his Harlem alphabet and the PS1 survey fit into the same season of attention to abstraction.

How to read a work made of leftovers

Bradford's method turns the neighborhood into a studio. The sanding that reveals layers also destroys the surface that once spoke, so each letter records both what was posted and what was removed. The museum frames the alphabet as a body of work about social and economic systems, and the two phrases it quotes, Stop Evictions and Affordable Daycare, point at housing and care. We cannot say which fragments survive in any given sheet, since we have not seen the works in person.

Visiting

The museum lists suggested admission of $16 for adults and $9 for seniors, students and visitors with disabilities, with free admission for children 16 and under and free Sundays, though tickets are required. Hours in the press release are Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., with extended hours on Friday until 9 p.m. Artguide lists slightly different hours, Wednesday and Thursday 11 to 6, Friday and Saturday 11 to 9 and Sunday 11 to 6, so check before you go.

What we could not confirm

We did not visit and have not seen the works in person. We relied on the museum's press release and Artguide. We could not reach Hauser and Wirth's page for Bradford's other New York work, which blocked our reader, and so we do not describe it. The hours differ between our two sources. Prices and hours can change. The cover photograph is a 2016 portrait and was not taken at the exhibition.

FAQ

Where is Mark Bradford: Untitled (A-Z), 2010?

At the Studio Museum in Harlem, 144 West 125th Street, through Jan. 3, 2027.

How many works are in it?

Twenty-six works on paper, one for each letter.

When does Hard Art open?

Nov. 5, 2026, at MoMA PS1.

Sources

*Cover photo: Prague591, Wikimedia Commons, *[*https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MarkBradfordPortrait4.jpg*](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MarkBradfordPortrait4.jpg)* (CC BY-SA 4.0).*