MoMA, Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America

Issues in Contemporary Architecture series, Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, an investigation into the intersections of architecture, Blackness and anti–Black racism in the American context. Issues in Contemporary Architecture is an ongoing series of architecture and design exhibitions at MoMA that focus on timely topics in contemporary architecture, with an emphasis on the urban dimension, in order to increase public dialogue around major issues in the field.

On view from February 20 through May 31, 2021, the exhibition and accompanying publication will examine contemporary architecture in the context of how systemic racism has fostered violent histories of discrimination and injustice in the United States. Such conditions 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.

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Reconstructions will feature 10 newly commissioned works by the selected architects, designers, and artists: Emanuel Admassu, Germane Barnes, Sekou Cooke, J. Yolande Daniels, Felecia Davis, Mario Gooden, Walter Hood, Olalekan Jeyifous, V. MitchMcEwen, and Amanda Williams. Individual projects will 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, policy makers, thinkers, and architects supported the curatorial team in establishing the conceptual framework and the selection process for the participants and sites.