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Jennifer Newsom

  • Assistant Professor
Curriculum Vitae (CV)

Department

Academic Research Areas

  • Architectural design
  • Architectural practice
  • Installation art
  • Public art

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.

Person with long dark hair in dreadlocks

Academic Research Areas

  • Architectural design
  • Architectural practice
  • Installation art
  • Public art

Publications

  • A Choice of Weapons: Image Notes from Minneapolis

    In MasContext33: Vigilantism. Barnes, Germane, and Shawhin Roudbari (eds), 2021.

  • A Refusal of Border

    In Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America. Anderson, Sean, and Mabel O. Wilson (eds). New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2021.

  • Architects, African-American

    In Africana: The Encyclopedia of African and African-American Experience, Second Edition. Gates Jr., Henry Louis, and K. Anthony Appiah (eds). New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Selected Awards, Grants, and Fellowships

  • Emerging Voice, The Architectural League of New York

    2023

  • Rome Prize in Architecture, The American Academy in Rome

    2022–23

  • United States Artists Fellowship in Architecture and Design

    2022

  • McKnight Fellowship in Visual Art, McKnight Foundation

    2021

  • J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize

    2020–21

  • Young Architects Program, MoMA PS1

    2018

Selected Exhibitions and Presentations

  • Afterimages III

    The Graham Foundation for the 2023 Chicago Architecture Biennial, curated by the Floating Museum.

  • Afterimages I

    2023 Architecture Biennial, curated by Lesley Lokko.

  • Columbia Columbia Colombo Colón

    J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize, “Exhibit Columbus,” curated by Mimi Zeiger and Iker Gil, Columbus, IN, 2021.

  • Lure

    MadArt Studio, Seattle, WA, 2019.

  • Hide & Seek

    MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program, New York City, 2018.

  • Longing

    Minneapolis, MN, 2015.

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