Run Together and Look Ugly After the First Rain

Amanda Williams is a Chicago-based visual artist trained as an architect whose practice uses color to examine how race shapes perceptions of value in the built environment. Her acclaimed series "Color(ed) Theory"—condemned South Side houses painted in culturally coded hues—was named by the New York Times among the 25 most significant works of postwar architecture, while her ongoing project "What Black Is This You Say?" explores the meanings of Blackness across platforms from Instagram to public installations. Williams’s work, spanning installations, sculptures, paintings, and sound, has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Venice Architecture Biennale, MoMA, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the Hammer Museum, and is held in permanent collections such as MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Smithsonian. A founding member of the Black Reconstruction Collective and board member of several arts foundations, she was named a 2022 MacArthur Fellow.

This lecture recording can be found on the Available Recordings page approximately two business days after the event and will remain accessible for three weeks.