The Museum of Modern Art has launched Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, the fourth installment of the Issues in Contemporary Architecture series. Investigating the intersections of architecture, Blackness and anti–Black racism in the American context, the exhibition and accompanying publication examine contemporary architecture in the context of how systemic racism has fostered violent histories of discrimination and injustice in the United States.
"Reconstructions" features 10 newly commissioned works by the selected architects, designers, and artists: Emanuel Admassu, Germane Barnes, Sekou Cooke, Yolande Daniels, Felecia Davis, Mario Gooden, Walter Hood, Olalekan Jeyifous, V. Mitch McEwen, and Amanda Williams. The museum notes that conditions of systemic racism "have structured and continue to inform the built environment of American cities through public policies, municipal planning, and architecture, with specific repercussions for African American and African diaspora communities. Projects will explore how people have mobilized Black cultural spaces, forms, and practices as sites of imagination, liberation, resistance, and refusal."
The exhibition features individual projects that respond to narratives and conditions found in Atlanta, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, New Orleans, Oakland, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Syracuse. An advisory committee composed of scholars, writers, historians, policymakers, thinkers, and architects supported the curatorial team in establishing the conceptual framework and the selection process for the participants and sites.
Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America is organized by Sean Anderson, Associate Curator, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art, and Mabel O. Wilson, Nancy, and George E. Rupp Professor, Columbia University, with Arièle Dionne-Krosnick, former Curatorial Assistant, and Anna Burckhardt, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition will be on view from February 27 through May 31, 2021.
News via MoMA
