Michelle Joan Wilkinson to Present 'Black Pillars' Lecture Online Nov. 2

Jonathan Timmes

Michelle Joan Wilkinson

Michelle Joan Wilkinson will present a virtual lecture at 4 p.m. Monday, Nov. 2, as part of the fall lecture series in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design. Wilkinson is a curator at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture, in Washington, D.C., where she is expanding the museum's collections in architecture and design.  

Wilkinson co-curated two inaugural museum exhibitions: "A Century in the Making: Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture" and "A Changing America: 1968 and Beyond." In 2018, she served as lead organizer for the museum's three-day symposium, "Shifting the Landscape: Black Architects and Planners, 1968 to Now."

The Fay Jones School's fall lecture series focuses on issues of equity and justice in the built environment. The series is presented in collaboration with Places Journal, an internationally respected online journal of architecture, landscape architecture and urbanism, and the U of A Office for Diversity and Inclusion. The series is also made possible in part by a gift from Ken and Liz Allen of Fayetteville, part of an overall set of commitments the Allens have made to the school's programs and initiatives in diversity, equity and inclusion.

Registration for the entire lecture series is available on Zoom.

In her lecture, "Black Pillars: Notes on Precarious Resilience," Wilkinson will put architectural discourse into friction with critical thinking about disparity through the lenses of race, gender and class.

Her presentation will note several "Black pillars" — a term Wilkinson uses to describe the expectations of strength that have codified Black and brown bodies. Wilkinson contends that whether imagined to be magical or expected to be unbreakable, Black people are subject to damaging perceptions of resilience. She is concerned with the capacity of "Black pillars" — real and enacted — to withstand this moment in history. What does their weathering entail? What happens after resilience?

To approach these questions, Wilkinson draws on African American literature, history and art to refine how we look for disparity in design, and how we see race in space.

Before arriving at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Wilkinson spent six years as director of Collections and Exhibitions at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture. She has also worked at the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Studio Museum in Harlem.

As a fellow of the Center for Curatorial Leadership in 2012, Wilkinson completed a short-term residency at the Design Museum in London. Her research on architectural heritage in the Anglophone Caribbean has been presented to international audiences in Suriname, England, India and the United States. Wilkinson's most recent efforts explore issues of representation in architectural renderings.

Wilkinson received a Bachelor of Arts from Bryn Mawr College and a Ph.D. from Emory University. In 2019-2020, she was a Loeb Fellow in residence at Harvard Graduate School of Design.

The school is pursuing continuing education credits for this lecture through the American Institute of Architects and the American Society of Landscape Architects.

This virtual lecture is open to the public. For details on watching the lecture, please visit the Fay Jones School's lecture page. To register for the entire lecture series, complete this form on Zoom.

For more information, contact 479-575-4704 or fayjones.uark.edu.