The highly anticipated exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, takes its name from the historic two decades that followed the bloody Civil War. Yet, despite the reference, the show (through May 31) isn’t a call to a return— the aim is to reflect on the legacy of a country attempting to redefine itself. While the works commissioned from 10 prominent architects, landscape architects, designers, and artists place a critical lens on systems of racial oppression, “the premise is not to press for solution-based designs,” according to the cocurators, Mabel O. Wilson, professor of architecture and Black studies at Columbia University (and 2019 RECORD Women in Architecture honoree), and Sean Anderson of MoMA. Instead, the process of interrogating the past and the present, as a way to insist on liberating futures for Black lives, gives a new understanding of what architecture can actually do.
Amanda Williams. Spatial Diagrams. 2020. Ink on paper. 26 x 12” (66.04 x 30.48 cm). Image courtesy of the artist. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Click to enlarge.
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