On the occasion of the exhibition Dear Mazie, Acting Senior Curator Amber Esseiva invites experts from the field to discuss the legacy and future of Black architecture, as well as the making of the show. Featuring architect Mario Gooden, the AD–WO collective, Columbia University architectural historian Mabel Wilson, Marland Buckner of the Shockoe Institute, and artist Abigail Lucien.

Gallery and happy hour at 5 PM with panel discussion starting at 6 PM. Arrive early to view the exhibition.

About the panelists:

Mario Gooden is a professor of professional practice, director of the MArch Program, sequence director for Advanced Architecture Studios, and co-director of the Global Africa Lab at Columbia GSAPP, an innovative research initiative that explores the spatial topologies of the African continent and its diaspora. Gooden is also director of Mario Gooden Studio: Architecture + Design, a transdisciplinary practice dedicated to the design and exploration of architecture and its relationships to culture and knowledge.

Mabel O. Wilson works across multiple disciplines of architecture, cultural history, curation, and visual arts with her practice Studio&. At Columbia University, she serves as the chair of the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies and is a professor in architecture.

Abigail Lucien is a Haitian-American interdisciplinary artist working across sculpture, literature, and time-based media. Their work addresses themes of (be)longing, futurity, myth, and place by considering our relationship to inherited colonial structures and systems of care. Lucien is currently based in Queens, New York, and teaches as an assistant professor of sculpture at Hunter College.

AD—WO (Emanuel Admassu and Jen Wood) is an art and architecture practice that aims to establish an operational terrain between architecture’s content and container. They are equally committed to designing buildings and reimagining their dynamic sociopolitical contexts.

Marland Buckner is president and CEO of the Shockoe Institute, a national organization headquartered in Richmond dedicated to revealing the enduring impact of American slavery on our ongoing shared American experience.