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Due to an unexpected emergency, this lecture was canceled. We hope to have Dr. Wilson back at another time.
The Paul R. Jones Annual Lecture will be delivered by Dr. Mabel O. Wilson on Monday, February 26, 2018, and is titled "Notes on a Virginia Statehouse: Architecture and Race in Jefferson's America." Hosted by the Department of Art History, Wilson's campus visit includes conversations with students, faculty, and staff across departments and units.
Mabel O. Wilson is a Professor of Architecture, a co-director of Global Africa Lab (GAL), and the Associate Director at the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University. She received her B.S. in Architecture from University of Virginia, Master's of Architecture from Columbia GSAPP, and a Ph.D. in American Studies from New York University. She is currently writing a book about slavery's influence on early American civic architecture, titled Building Race and Nation: How Slavery Influenced Antebellum American Civic Architecture. She published Begin with the Past: Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2016 and Negro Building: African Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums in 2012. She is a member of the design team for the Memorial to Enslaved African American Laborers at the University of Virginia. She was recently one of twelve curators contributing to MoMA's current exhibition Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Architecture. In addition, she is a founding member of Who Builds Your Architecture? (WBYA?), a collective that advocates for fair labor practices on building sites worldwide and whose work was most recently shown in a solo show at the Art Institute of Chicago.
The Paul R. Jones Annual Lecture honors the late Mr. Jones and his gift of African American art to the University in 2001. Since its arrival on campus, UD has supported a wide range of research and curricular programming using African American art as the seminal point of departure. The Annual Lecture also brings attention to African American and African diasporic programming, and showcases an individual whose contributions to the field are exemplary, interdisciplinary, and inspiring. Previous Paul R. Jones Lecturers hosted by UD include Gloria Wade Gayles, Richard Long, Rick Powell, Alison Saar, Keith Morrison, David Driskell, Mel Edwards and Jayne Cortez, Sonya Clark, Thomas Allen Harris, Ty Jones, and Fo Wilson.
This includes American art and culture in dialogue with Africa and its diaspora. The Paul R. Jones Distinguished Lecturer at the University of Delaware is an annual event sponsored by the Paul R. Jones Initiative (PRJI) and affiliated departments in the College of Arts and Sciences, including the Interdisciplinary Humanities Research Center (IHRC) and Africana Studies.
