Mabel O. Wilson is Updating the Narrative of American Architecture to Include Black Architects

Now is an important time to catch up with architect Mabel O. Wilson. The Nancy and George Rupp Professor of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University is involved in multiple projects that hold the potential to change the way architectural history is being taught and to revise the methods traditionally used to record it. Her scholarship is chiefly aimed at repairing America’s incomplete narrative on African-American contributions to the built environment, and as public discourse on social justice expands, so does her audience: Her latest insights informed the University of Virginia’s Memorial to Enslaved Laborers, which she helped Höweler + Yoon design; she coedited the book Race and Modern Architecture: A Critical History from the Enlightenment to the Present with Charles L. Davis II and Irene Cheng; and she is currently at work on the upcoming MoMA exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, which she is cocurating with the museum staff. Fellow architect Kimberly Dowdell, president of the National Organization of Minority Architects, spoke with Wilson about these moves and American architectural pedagogy. 

Metropolis. “Mabel O. Wilson Is Updating the Narrative of American Architecture to Include Black Architects.” Accessed May 12, 2022. https://metropolismag.com/profiles/mabel-o-wilson-is-updating-the-narrative-of-american-architecture-to-include-black-architects/.