Just Beneath the Surface: A review of Cityscapes of New Orleans by Richard Campanella, Landscape Architecture Magazine (January 2019)

Reviewed by Amber N. Wiley

Amber was invited to speak on a panel about Power at “A Convergence at the Confluence of Power, Identity and Design” symposium that was hosted by Women In Design at the Harvard GSD.

Amber was quoted in a Teen Vogue article that highlighted controversy over the naming of the Clarence Thomas Center for Historic Preservation in the era of the #metoo movement, and in light of the Kavanaugh Supreme Court hearings:

Yale University and other institutions such as University of Michigan have recently adopted policies about how to deal with requests to reconsider names of existing buildings. In 2017 Yale changed the name of Calhoun College, which was named after John C. Calhoun, the seventh U.S. vice president and a white supremacist who once called slavery a “positive good.” They renamed it after Yale alum Grace Murray Hopper, a computer science pioneer. Michigan announced earlier this year it will be changing the name of two buildings after the legacies of their namesakes were called into question.

Amber Wiley, assistant professor of art history at Rutgers University, researches architecture, urbanism, and African American cultural studies. She attended Yale as an undergraduate, where she says she witnessed firsthand the impact that being in Calhoun College had on students of color. “Place names are so important. They carry a lot of weight,” she says. “The kind of emotional and psychological toll that this plays on people who attend these universities, who have to sit in the classrooms in the building, this is not a thing to just take lightly. [They feel] the burden of history.”

Wiley says that in some ways, the discussion about Calhoun at Yale was much more straightforward than the current situation at SCAD because Calhoun’s pro-slavery views were well documented — and Calhoun died in the 1800s.

 

To read the full article, visit: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/scad-clarence-thomas-building-petitions

Since 2012, the Society of Architectural Historians Blog has covered a variety of topics related to the history of the built environment. Articles have addressed issues concerning politics, preservation, and pedagogy, some have focused on the work of a specific architect or building types, and others have provided readers with useful resources. The blog has also housed the monthly reports of SAH’s H. Allen Brooks Travelling Fellows as they document their journeys around the world.

Amber Wiley’s blog post, “The New Flower: Addis Ababa and the Project of African Modernity” from her time as the inaugural H. Allen Brooks Travelling Fellow, came in at number five.

To see the other four most popular SAH Blog posts of all time please click here.

Oklahoma Foundation for Excellence 2018

OETA PRESENTS

Special | 1h 24m 2s

Five outstanding Oklahoma educators and 100 of the state’s top public high school seniors are recognized at the Oklahoma Foundation for Excellence 31st Academic Awards Banquet.  Amber Wiley, Academic All-State Alumnus ’99, was invited back to speak with current Academic All-Staters, and to introduce one of the educator awardees during the banquet program.

4.20.2018

The event does not seek answers, only ideas. Charlottesville is many things and we seek to draw strength from varied perspectives and approaches. We want to address the challenge of designing public space in this climate, not just with words but with landscape materials, form and space. Landscape Perspectives for Future Publics hosts a panel of invited landscape architects and academics to present their ‘visions’ for Charlottesville. These proposals may be hopeful, bleak, abstract, real, or somewhere in-between. A discussion will follow challenging what it means for the practice and praxis of landscape architecture to be more inclusive, representative and equitable.

Benjamin C. Howland Panel Invited Presenters + Panelists: Kofi Boone, Alexa Bush, Garnette Cadogan, Azzurra Cox, Frank Dukes, Walter Hood, Amber Wiley, Sara Zewde Moderated by: Elgin Cleckley, UVA School of Architecture

This panel is presented in coordination with the Benjamin C. Howland Lecture, by Walter Hood, on April 19, at 5:30pm in Campbell Hall 153. It is hosted by SALAD and the Howland Panel Committee.

Paper Monuments is a series of opportunities, events, and interventions designed to elevate the voices of the people of New Orleans, as a critical process to creating symbols of our city that represent our collective vision, and to honor the erased histories of the people, places, movements, and events that have made up the past 300 years as we look to the future.

Paper Monuments is a megaphone for New Orleanians to use art and storytelling to answer the question:

What is an appropriate monument to our city today?

The Pythian Temple project was a collaboration between Chris Daemmrich, artist, and Amber Wiley, storyteller. Paper Monuments is the brainchild of Sue Mobley and Bryan C. Lee Jr., founders of Colloqate Design.

Skidmore College Assistant Professor of American Studies Amber Wiley on “When and Where I Enter the British Museum” by Carrie Mae Weems.

Carrie Mae Weems
“When and Where I Enter the British Museum,” 2006
Tang Teaching Museum collection
Gift of Ann Schaffer and Mel Schaffer