Mabel Wilson, Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, will speak on “Other Monumentalities - Race, Style and National Architecture” on February 18, 2015 at 4:30 p.m. in the Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum (600 S. Gregory Street, Urbana).

This event is free and open to the public.  There will be a reception following the event.

Wilson's presentation will compare the design of the original Smithsonian Institution (1855) by architect James Renwick and the new National African American Museum of History and Culture (2016) by architect David Adjaye.  Wilson considers how emerging ideas of racial difference influenced original Smithsonian’s mission and subsequent expression of a national style, an American style of architecture.  Her presentation will also ask if and how Adjaye’s design for the new museum critically challenges and complicates the readings of identity, race and culture implicit in how the U.S. was represented and imagined through the Smithsonian’s original mission and structure.

Mabel O. Wilson’s transdisciplinary practice “Studio &” engages architecture, art, and cultural history. As the Nancy and George E. Rupp Professor, she teaches architectural design and history/theory courses at Columbia University’s GSAPP and is appointed as a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Research in African American Studies. She has authored “Negro Building: Black Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums,” which was a finalist for John Hope Franklin in 2013.

Thanks to the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities for this information item.

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