On July 1, Amber Wiley became the inaugural Matt and Erika Nord Director of the Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites (CPCRS) at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design. Wiley, who joined Weitzman in January, as Presidential Associate Professor of Historic Preservation, is an award-winning architectural and urban historian whose teaching and research center on the social aspects of design and how it affects urban communities.
In a Q&A, Wiley describes her paired interests in preservation policy and exhibition curation, her work in Washington, D.C., to protect the legacy of the Barry Farm Dwellings as they are being redeveloped, and her work with students to organize an exhibition of Black women artists at Rutgers University’s Zimmerli Art Museum.
“The Center brings visibility—and in some ways even validation—to the kind of research I do looking at Black historic landmarks, which are often marginalized,” says Wiley. “These sites are often underfunded and imperiled because of the lack of resources that are really necessary to steward them.”
Wiley will start teaching at Weitzman in the spring of 2024, and shares what she is planning. “Ahead of the 1976 Bicentennial, there was a push by an organization called the Afro-American Bicentennial Corporation to nominate Black national historic landmarks, including the Henry Ossawa Tanner House and Mother Bethel AME Church here in Philadelphia. I am interested in doing a survey of Black heritage sites in Philadelphia to determine the feasibility of creating nominations ahead of the Semiquincentennial in 2026.”
This story is by John Caperton. Read more at Weitzman News.
