The Brooklyn Rail

James Harithas’s twinkling eyes and broad smile drove his desire to enlist Art as a vehicle for truth and social justice. With curatorial talent he fearlessly enlisted incredible artists to exhibit at the Station Museum of Contemporary Art. Through this venue, Jim promoted artists that corporate funded museums could not. The community was invited to exciting openings with titles like Portrait of a Corporate Crime, Crude, Red Fall, Torture, or Hermann Nitsch: The Orgies. For inspiration, I would take my students on field trips to those exhibitions.

When the Station Museum of Contemporary Art opened in 2003, Luis Jimenez introduced me to James Harithas as a cutting edge curator. Luis explained that Jim gave him his first solo museum exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston in 1974. At that time very little diversity was being shown in mainstream galleries, Jim was ahead of the curve with Luis’s Progress exhibition.

In 2015, Jim invited me to organize Detention Nation, an installation with the Sin Huellas art collective for the exhibition Degrees of Separation at the Station Museum. James’s interest was to expose the systemic corporate structure in immigrant detention centers. His concern was the incarceration of immigrant children. He funded the production of the installation. After Detention Nation came down, it continued to be shown for the next five years in numerous venues. Detention Nation now lives forever as an artspace on the web. [Detentionnation.com] James Harithas believed in the artist as a cultural worker and established a venue so truth could speak to power. His passing is a loss for our art community and may he always be remembered for his integrity and faith in the artist.

James Harithas ¡Presente!

Delilah Montoya 2023