Artist, activist, and community organizer Tom Lloyd (1929–1996) was an early pioneer of using electric light as an artistic medium. Collaborating with an engineer at the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), Lloyd developed a highly experimental and technologically advanced art practice in the 1960s that challenged popular understandings of what role the work of Black artists should play.

Although his work was collected and included in numerous exhibitions, by the end of the decade, Lloyd had already moved away from full-time artmaking to dedicate himself to activism and community leadership. He was a founding member of the Art Workers’ Coalition, which formed in 1969 to advocate for artists’ rights, and founded and led the Store Front Museum/Paul Robeson Theatre (1971–1986) in Queens.

The exhibition explores twenty years of the artist’s career and shows, for the first time ever, his assemblages, electronically programmed light sculptures, and works on paper together and alongside materials that illuminate his efforts to transform the New York art world.