'The Black Home as Public Art' examines different traditions in the Black canon of architecture at UT Austin this fall

This fall at the UT Austin School of Architecture, a new exhibition will examine the creativity of Black artists and activist traditions through notable interventions in vernacular architecture from the 1960s to today. 

Associate Professor Charles L. Davis II is the exhibition’s organizer. He says the examples on display in The Black Home as Public Art "collectively embody decolonial representations of Blackness in a settler colonial context.”

Contemporary projects from designers such as Theaster Gates and Amanda Williams can be considered side-by-side with historic community-focused efforts spearheaded by Amiri Baraka, Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, and Huey P. Newton. Some of these are focused on reforming the state of detached single-family homes in working-class districts to align with the demands of various social justice movements using a combination of adaptive reuse and public art. Others include a range of artistic and spatial justice interventions. The exhibition is being supported by the Graham Foundation and the Arnold W. Brunner Grant from the AIANY.

“The Black Home as Public Art and the broader Black Space Project address aspects of our discipline that have been relegated to the margins of scholarship—the contributions of Black Americans and non-licensed practitioners,” Dean Heather Woofter said of its importance to the wider net of architecture. “This important work expands the boundaries by which architects, designers, and theorists consider our built environment, broadening our understanding and paving the way for new, interdisciplinary avenues of inquiry.”

A two-day symposium focused on the importance of pluralizing the architectural canon towards a more holistic approach to design will kick off the exhibition from September 11th to 12th, featuring Curry J. Hackett, Komozi Woodard, and others concerned with those questions. The symposium and the exhibition are also meant to lay the groundwork to establish a Black Space Archive to further expand research opportunities on the subject. 

The Black Home as Public Art will be on display from August 30th to November 15th in UTSoA's Mebane Gallery.