Protesting Philip Johnson

The open letter — posted on November 27 via The ---- Johnson Study Group on Instagram — was signed by more than 40 people, some of them (Emanuel Admassu, Germane Barnes, Sekou Cooke, J. Yolande Daniels, Felecia Davis, Olalekan Jeyifous, V. Mitch McEwen, Amanda Williams) participating in Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America opening at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in February. The exhibition is billed as the institution's "first exhibition to explore the relationship between architecture and the spaces of African American and African diaspora communities." Given that MoMA's Architecture & Design Department was founded by Philip Johnson in 1932, this means it took nearly 90 years for the museum to focus on buildings designed by Black architects and for Black communities.

Reconstruction is being curated by MoMA A&D curator Sean Anderson and Columbia University's Mabel O. Wilson (who co-edited last year's Race and Modern Architecture: A Critical History from the Enlightenment to the Present) with curatorial assistant Arièle Dionne-Krosnick. Not involved is Martino Stierli, who since 2015 has been The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art; it seems the open letter is squarely targeted on Stierli's title, as well as a gallery in the museum that bears Johnson's name.

The ---- Johnson Study Group singling out the Harvard Graduate School of Design relates to the fact Johnson graduated from the GSD in the early 1940s. At 9 Ash Street in Cambridge, Johnson built an actual house as his thesis project. The GSD-owned house is known as the Philip Johnson Thesis House. No longer, though, per GSD Dean Sarah Whiting's response to the open letter. She wrote in a statement (dated December 5) that the GSD will "officially recognize the house within the university as simply '9 Ash Street' — the house’s physical address."

Although this action is minor given that the house never officially carried Johnson's name, it is aligned with the open letter's assertion that "there is a role for Johnson's architectural work in archives and historic preservation" but not with names and titles that "[suggest] the honoree is a model for curators, administrations, students and others who participate in these institutions." Although it's hard to see Johnson serving as a model for students today, his well known Nazi sympathies (biographer Mark Lamster says "he was essentially an active agent of the Nazi state") and the open letter's assertion that he "effectively segregated the architectural collection at MoMA" so it omitted work by Black architects clearly points to the need for a corrective — a long overdue one at that.