Join Chicago-born architect Germane Barnes; Mabel O. Wilson, professor of Architecture and African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University; and Lisa Ayla Çakmak, chair and curator of Arts of the Ancient Mediterranean and Byzantium, for a conversation on Germane Barnes: Columnar Disorder.
For his first solo museum exhibition, Barnes recasts the canonical foundations of Western architecture through the lens of the African diaspora. Critically reflecting on the enduring legacy of the Classical orders—the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian—whose distinctive columns endure across our built environment today, Barnes upends these long-standing and ubiquitous conventions by reimagining architectural orders rooted in the Black experience, history, and values.
This program is generously sponsored by the Boshell Family Foundation.
About the Speakers
Germane Barnes was born in Chicago, IL and now lives in Miami, FL. His award-winning research and design practice investigates the connection between architecture and identity, examining architecture’s social and political agency through historical research and design speculation. He is currently an associate professor and the director of the Graduate Architecture Program at the University of Miami School of Architecture. His work has been featured in international institutions including the Museum of Modern Art NY, San Francisco MoMA, LACMA, Chicago Architecture Biennial, and MAS Context.
Mabel O. Wilson is a professor of Architecture and African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University. Through her design firm Studio &, she was a member of the design team for the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia. For MoMA, she co-curated Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America (2021).
Lisa Ayla Çakmak is chair and curator of Arts of the Ancient Mediterranean and Byzantium at the Art Institute of Chicago. Prior to joining the museum in 2020, she spent 10 years at the Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM), most recently as the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Associate Curator. Lisa has lectured and published widely on an extensive range of scholarly and professional topics, including the roles of women, hybridization, and identity in the Hellenistic world, as well as museum professional training and career paths.
If you have any questions about programming, please reach out to museum-programs@artic.edu.
Closed captioning will be available for this program. For questions related to accessibility accommodations, please email access@artic.edu.