Expanded Perspectives: Architects of Liberation Study Day brings together leading scholars, designers, and artists on the occasion of the exhibition Architects of Liberation: Modernism in Western Africa.
Antawan I. Byrd will deliver a keynote lecture drawing on his dynamic approach to assessing Pan-African history. Focusing on landmark buildings in African cities, this talk examines how the reproduction and circulation of architecture across everyday media forms, including photography, popular magazines, and record covers, shaped its associations with modernity.
François-Xavier Gbré, Olalekan Jeyifous, and Marilyn Nance will present short anecdotal presentations on their work and their personal connections to the exhibition, followed by a discussion co-moderated by Martino Stierli, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, and Mallory Cohen, Project Manager, Ambasz Institute, Department of Architecture and Design.
Antawan I. Byrd is an assistant professor of art history at Northwestern University. His research and teaching focus on the art and culture of Africa and the African diaspora from the late-19th century to the present. He recently co-curated Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica (2024–2026), a major survey exhibition examining Pan-Africanism’s influence on culture throughout the long 20th century. The exhibition opened at the Art Institute of Chicago in December 2024, traveled to Barcelona’s Museum of Contemporary Art in November 2025, and opened at London’s Barbican Art Centre in June 2026.
François-Xavier Gbré (1978) is a photographer who lives and works between La Rochelle, France, and Abidjan, Ivory Coast. For the past 15 years, Gbré has investigated the built environment across West Africa as an evolving record of economic development, social change, and memory. From the dilapidated remnants of colonial-era institutions to the monuments of post-independence urban development, Gbré’s photographs frame the region’s architectural heritage as part of its contemporary reality, revealing how the legacies of the past meet in the present. Gbré’s works can be found in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Tate Modern, among numerous other institutions. In 2020, Gbré won the Louis Roederer Foundation Discovery Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles. He was the inaugural laureate of the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès’ Latitudes program.
Olalekan Jeyifous received a bachelor of architecture from Cornell University and is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work reimagines the intersections of architecture, community, and the environment through inventive visual storytelling. By merging physical and digital elements with both historical and speculative contexts, his practice offers critical reflections on existing systems while imagining alternative ways of relating to each other and the spaces we inhabit. His art has been exhibited at such major institutions as the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Vitra Design Museum, and Guggenheim Bilbao, and is held in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and SFMOMA.
Marilyn Nance has produced images of unique moments in the cultural history of the United States and the African diaspora for over five decades. In 1977 she served as the official photographer of the North American delegation of the Second World Festival of Black and African Arts and Culture, an extraordinary Pan African event known as FESTAC 77, held in Lagos, Nigeria. Drawn from her extensive photographic archive, her 2022 monograph Last Day in Lagos produced entirely by an international team of women, chronicles the exuberant intensity and sociopolitical significance of the event.
Nance is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, a worldwide community of photographers committed to bringing photography to everyone. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Accessibility
This theater is equipped with an induction loop that transmits directly to hearing aids with T-coils.
American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation is available for public programs upon request with two weeks’ advance notice. MoMA will make every effort to provide accommodation for requests made with less than two weeks’ notice. Please contact [email protected] to make a request for these accommodations.
The nearest all-gender restroom is located in the Cullman Mezzanine.
Wheelchair-accessible seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis.
For more information on accessibility at MoMA, please visit moma.org/visit/accessibility.
Major funding is provided by the Agnes Gund Education Endowment Fund for Public Programs, the Jeanne Thayer Young Scholars Fund, and the Annual Education Fund.