About

In this episode Patti Anahory speaks with Mabel O. Wilson, professor of architecture and Associate Director at the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University, New York. Professor Wilson talks, in part, about her book Begin with the Past: Building the National Museum of African American History & Culture, which traces the journey of building the museum in all its aspects, from its conception, to its organization, content to its built manifestation. errant_praxis asks professor Wilson to share her thoughts about how to imagine new types of platforms of validation, which simultaneously construct-deconstruct, repair, archive, support and allow for a constant state of flux to accommodate the complexity of our contexts and avoid becoming part of the establishment. bio Mabel O. Wilson is a Professor of Architecture, a co-director of Global Africa Lab (GAL) and the Associate Director at the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University. She’s currently writing Building Race and Nation, a book about how slavery influenced early American civic architecture. She has authored Begin with the Past: Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture (2016) and Negro Building: African Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums (2012). She is a member of the design team for the Memorial to Enslaved African American Laborers at the University of Virginia. She’s a founding member of Who Builds Your Architecture? (WBYA?) a collective that advocates for fair labor practices on building sites worldwide and whose work was most recently shown in a solo show at the Art Institute of Chicago. In this episode professor Wilson mentions: Museum of African-American History and Culture https://nmaahc.si.edu/ The Smithsonian Institution https://www.si.edu/ Lonnie G. Bunch III https://www.si.edu/about/bios/lonnie-g-bunch-iii Mario Gooden https://www.arch.columbia.edu/faculty/16-mario-gooden Global Africa Lab https://www.arch.columbia.edu/research/labs/1-global-africa-lab Mpho Matsipa https://www.wits.ac.za/staff/academic-a-z-listing/m/mat/mphomatsipawitsacza/ African Mobilities Exhibition http://africanmobilities.org/ ***Episode image created from an institution-icon from: