How does race structure America’s cities" That’s the question New York’s Museum of Modern Art asks with its new exhibition, Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America. When putting together the show, curators Sean Andersson and Mabel O. Wilson, along with Ariéle Dionne-Krosknick and Anna Burckhardt, commissioned 10 architects, artists, and designers to explore the intersections of architecture, Blackness, and anti-Black racism.

Though it may be invisible to some, racial segregation, separation, and violence form the framework of the American built environment, and Reconstructions unveils it and then casts it aside to make room for more just and poetic alternatives. Calling themselves the Black Reconstruction Collective, the exhibition’s participants envision interventions for 10 cities, including Oakland, Syracuse, and Miami, at times imagining alternate pasts that might have led to an altogether different present. What if, for instance, Black Americans had been able to participate equally in rebuilding the nation after the Civil War" What if we didn’t collectively view architecture and our built environments through the lens of Eurocentrism" What might Black communities have looked like without the racist practice of redlining"
Emanuel Admassu, Germane Barnes, Sekou Cooke, J. Yolanda Daniels, Walter Hood, Mario Gooden, Felecia Davis, Olalekan Jeyifous, Amanda Williams, and V. Mitch McEwen have each crea...