Reconstructions

During the Museum of Modern Art’s 90-year history, African American architects and designers have had little to no purchase in its permanent collection and exhibition histories, reflective of larger trends in museum and architectural discourses at large. The exclusion of Black architects and designers from the academic imagination have largely been waylaid in favor of dominant formalist and stylistic concerns. This book, conceived as a field guide to accompany the exhibition at MoMA, examines how contemporary architecture may address the varied contexts of systemic anti-Black racism that have fostered violent histories of discrimination and injustice in the United States. The invited contributors reimagine the legacies of race-based dispossession in ten American cities and how individuals and communities across the United States have mobilized Black cultural spaces, forms, and practices as sites of imagination, liberation, resistance, and refusal. The catalogue will feature a portfolio of new photographs by artist David Hartt.

Sean Anderson is Associate Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Mabel O. Wilson is the Nancy and George Rupp Professor in Architecture at Columbia University.