This week, Cornell University’s School of Architecture, Artwork, and Scheduling (AAP) introduced that curator, educator, and designer Sean Anderson will be joining its faculty as an associate professor and director of the school’s Bachelor of Architecture (BArch) system. Anderson will be leaving his article as an affiliate curator in the Division of Architecture and Style at the Museum of Modern Artwork (MoMA) to go after the new situation at AAP, where by he has earlier organized the Functions of Fix symposium and held traveling to college positions.
After obtaining skilled degrees in architecture from Cornell and Princeton, Anderson pursued doctoral experiments in African artwork record at the University of California Los Angeles. A fellow of the American Academy in Rome, he expended more than 25 years working towards and training architecture in South Asia, as effectively as in Australia, Italy, Morocco, Afghanistan, and the United Arab Emirates.
In his job at MoMA, Anderson led a quantity of major curatorial tasks, together with the exhibitions Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter (2016), Contemplating Devices: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959-1989 (2017), and Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in The us (2021), which he co-curated with scholar and Columbia University professor Mabel O. Wilson. The very last exhibit was an iteration of the museum’s up to date architecture exhibition series and the to start with-at any time MoMA demonstrate to centre the perform of African-American and African diaspora designers and architects.
Anderson’s imprint extends into the museum’s large long term assortment as effectively, most notably by way of the accession of will work by designers from underrepresented backgrounds and geographies. Since late 2015, these have integrated pictures from the Colour(ed) Principle sequence by Chicago-based mostly artist Amanda Williams, drawings and types by Indian-born architects Raj Rewal and Anupama Kundoo, Refugee Flag by Refugee Country and Yara Reported, and a tapestry by Manuel Herz Architects and the Nationwide Union of Sahrawi Females. For the opening of the Diller Scofidio + Renfro-developed MoMA growth in October 2019, Anderson also curated the Developing Citizens selection gallery (on perspective right until 2022), which explored “architecture’s capability to give form to the social, political, and cultural proportions of…the worlds they inhabit” and included seminal is effective by Rael San Fratello, James Wines, and the 2021 Pritzker Prize winners Lacaton & Vassal.
In addition to his get the job done curating reveals and assortment galleries in the MoMA’s Midtown campus, Anderson contributed to the growth and growth of the Asia analyze team inside of MoMA’s Up to date and Contemporary Art Perspectives (C-MAP) plan. He applied his expertise as a researcher and educator to two really common Enormous Open up On the internet Programs (MOOCs) as a result of the museum: What is Modern Artwork? and Reimagining Blackness and Architecture.
Just one of Anderson’s most substantial contributions to the museum and the up to date architecture environment at massive arrived as a result of his coordination of the past four iterations of the Young Architects Plan (YAP) at MoMA PS1 in Queens. The program featured exhibitions of finalist proposals and significant-scale experimental installations by Pedro & Juana, Dream the Blend, Jenny Sabin Studio, and Escobedo Solíz Studio. Anderson served protected budget raises for taking part architects and streamlined the marriage involving YAP and PS1 through his tenure, even though the museum positioned the application on an ongoing hiatus in late 2019.
As he makes the changeover to his new function in Ithaca, Anderson will continue on a variety of curatorial jobs concentrated on fashionable architecture in transnational contexts, like as a co-curator for MoMA’s 2022 display Modern Architecture in South Asia: The Challenge of Decolonization, 1947-1985. At Cornell, he will assistance form foundational curricula for undergraduate college students in an intensive experienced diploma program. Caroline O’Donnell, chair of the school’s architecture department, highlighted the pursuit of “more just and equitable techniques to design” as a most important rationale for Anderson’s timely employ: “His know-how in places of South Asia and Africa, merged with his determination to actionable options for a spatial technique to reparations and restorative justice, will incorporate useful views to urgent international troubles.”