Friday / May 28, 2021 / 12:01 AM - 11:59 PM
Docomomo US National Symposium - Chicago: Crosswords of Modern America
Online
Join us for the 2021 Docomomo US National Symposium, May 25-28, during which we view innovation and change through the lens of the modern movement. Experience Chicago's history and the prospects for the recognition, interpretation, preservation and extension of these forms and ideas of modernism in the middle of America. As Docomomo US celebrates its 25th anniversary, we head back to where it all began: Chicago, Illinois. It was in 1995 that a group of volunteers gathered during the first Preserving the Recent Past conference to set in motion a Docomomo chapter in the United States. As we look back on 25 years of preserving modernism, we hope you will join Docomomo US and Docomomo US/Chicago VIRTUALLY for a deep dive into where we've been and what challenges lie in store.
The symposium will feature a joint keynote address by Mabel O. Wilson and Jack Pyburn that considers how race and the African American experience have been impacted by the Modern Movement and looks at the origins of how history is determined to be significant or valuable, which may in turn lead us to reconsider what we preserve. Mabel O. Wilson, architect, designer, scholar, and the Nancy and George Rupp Professor of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University, will begin the address with her presentation “Who’s Modern? Blackness and MoMA’s Architecture and Design Archive,” in which she will discuss the racialized dimensions of modernism’s canon, which has influenced the visibility and legibility of historical value. Jack Pyburn, FAIA, preservation architect and principal at Lord Aeck Sargent, will build on the topic with his talk, “What’s Modern? African American Environments in the Time of Modernism.” His presentation will explore the context and evolution of recent past African American environments primarily through the resources in the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument district. The keynote will follow with a moderated discussion by Theodore Prudon, FAIA, founding president of Docomomo US.
