Jennifer Newsom

Jennifer Newsom is a licensed architect, artist, and cofounder (with Tom Carruthers) of Dream The Combine. Together, they produce site-specific installations that explore metaphor, imaginary environments, and perceptual uncertainties at the boundary between real and illusory space. Their critiques often respond to the literal and socio-political dimensions of sites in order to destabilize our known understanding of the world. Dream The Combine was named a 2023 Emerging Voice by The Architectural League, 2022–2023 Rome Prize Fellows in Architecture by the American Academy in Rome, 2022 Fellows in Architecture and Design by United States Artists, 2021 Visual Artist Fellows by the McKnight Foundation, 2020–2021 J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize winners by Landmark Columbus, 2018 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program winners by The Museum of Modern Art, 2018 Architecture Residents at Art Omi, and 2017 Jerome Foundation/Franconia Sculpture Park Artists-in-Residence.

Their work has been exhibited at the 2023 Venice Biennale Architettura curated by Lesley Lokko, the Graham Foundation for the 2023 Chicago Architecture Biennial curated by The Floating Museum; The Museum of Modern Art; MoMA PS1; MadArt Studio in Seattle; and sites in Rome; Lisbon; Vancouver; Minneapolis; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Columbus, Indiana. Their writing and interviews have appeared in the Journal of Architectural Education, Architectural Design, MasContext, Log, Wallpaper, Metropolis, and Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America. Upcoming exhibitions include artwork at the Metropolitan Museum in Flight Into Egypt: African-American Artists and Egypt from 1867 to Now opening in November 2024.

Newsom earned her B.A. in Architecture with honors from Yale College and her M.Arch. with distinction from Yale School of Architecture.

Related Pages

• 2021 McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship Recipients
• Counterpublic Announces 2023 Curatorial Ensemble

Related News

• A Platform for Something to Happen
• At the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Artists Run Free
• This is a Rehearsal Embodies the "Beauty and Horror" of Our Global Moment
• The Chicago Architecture Biennial Announces its 2023 Participants
• Cornell AAP Faculty and Alumni Respond to the Venice Architecture Biennale's Call to Reflect and Reimagine

Awards, Grants, and Fellowships (Selected)

• 2023 Emerging Voice, The Architectural League of New York
• 2022–2023 Rome Prize in Architecture, The American Academy in Rome
• 2022 United States Artists Fellowship in Architecture and Design
• 2021 McKnight Fellowship in Visual Art, McKnight Foundation
• 2020–2021 J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize
• 2018 Young Architects Program, MoMA PS1

Exhibitions and Presentations (Selected)

• Afterimages III, The Graham Foundation for the 2023 Chicago Architecture Biennial, curated by the Floating Museum
• Afterimages I, 2023 Venice Architecture Biennial, curated by Lesley Lokko
• Columbia Columbia Colombo Colón, J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize, Exhibit Columbus, Columbus, Indiana, 2021, curated by Mimi Zeiger and Iker Gil
• Lure, MadArt Studio, Seattle, Washington, 2019
• Hide & Seek, 2018 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program, New York City
• Longing, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2015

Publications (Selected)

• Newsom, Jennifer. "A Choice of Weapons: Image Notes from Minneapolis." MasContext33: Vigilantism. Barnes, Germane and Shawhin Roudbari, eds. Accepted for publication forthcoming in 2021. 
• Newsom, Jennifer. "A Refusal of Border." Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America. Anderson, Sean and Mabel Wilson, eds. New York: Museum of Modern Art (2021).
• Newsom, Jennifer. "Architects, African-American." Africana: The Encyclopedia of African and African-American Experience. 2nd ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K. Anthony Appiah, eds. New York: Oxford University Press (2005).