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Milton S. F. Curry

  • Professor
  • Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives and Engagement
Curriculum Vitae (CV)

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Academic Research Areas

  • Architectural design
  • Architectural theory
  • Cities
  • Urbanism
  • Black studies
  • Cultural theory
  • Urban design

Milton S. F. Curry is a Professor of Architecture and Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives and Engagement at Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning; founding editor of CriticalProductive (a peer-reviewed academic journal focused on culture, arts, and spatial practice) distributed by MIT Press; and principal of Milton Curry ProjectStudio design consultancy.

Curry is a respected scholar and thinker on urbanism, visual culture, and the American city. He produces creative work and scholarship on the role of architecture in shaping social consciousness and the intersectional role of race, class, and urban geography embedded in modern and contemporary aesthetic practices in the Americas.

Curry is a seasoned academic leader: he was Dean and Professor at the University of Southern California School of Architecture from 2017–22; Associate Dean at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning; and Director of the Cornell University Council for the Arts. He currently serves on the Museum of Modern Art New York Board of Trustees Architecture and Design Acquisitions Committee and the Abode Communities Board of Directors and Finance Committee.

Curry received a Master of Architecture II post-professional degree with distinction from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 1992 and a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University in 1988.

A Black man wearing a blue suit in front of a plain white background

Academic Research Areas

  • Architectural design
  • Architectural theory
  • Cities
  • Urbanism
  • Black studies
  • Cultural theory
  • Urban design
  • Rendering of a modern brown building with a screen on the front of the building and people walking around the building.
  • Front view of an architectural model with gray materials and cylindrical features in the center.
  • Top view of an architectural model with gray materials and cylindrical features in the center.
  • A mockup of a modern building residing in Harlem with a red bullseye logo on the far left side.

DefJam Cafe and Studios (1996–98), speculative mockup.

Orbit ColiseumCity Oakland: Speculative Urban Development Project (2004–08), Oakland, CA.

Orbit ColiseumCity Oakland: Speculative Urban Development Project (2004–08), Oakland, CA.

NegroCity Housing + Harlem Target (2004), Harlemworld as a Metaphor Exhibition.

Publications

  • CriticalProductive Journal Issue 1: Sovereignty / Populism (Fall/Winter 2024)

    Editor in chief. 2024. CriticalProductive Holdings / MIT Press.

  • Toward an Architecture Race Theory

    2020. In Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America — MoMA Exhibition Catalogue. Edited by Sean Anderson and Mabel O. Wilson. New York: The Museum of Modern Art.

  • Urban Space: Production of Race

    2012. In Where are the Utopian Visionaries. Edited by Hansy Better. Pittsburgh: Periscope Press.

  • CriticalProductive Journal Issue V2.1: Post-Capitalist City (Winter 2013)

    Editor in chief. 2013. CriticalProductive Holdings / Disticor.

  • CriticalProductive Journal Issue V1.1: Theoretic Action (Autumn 2011)

    Editor in chief. 2011. CriticalProductive Holdings / Disticor.

  • Racial Critique of Public Housing Redevelopment Strategies

    2003. In Suburban Sprawl: Culture, Theory and Politics. Edited by Hugh Bartling and Matthew Lindstrom. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

  • Appendx Journal Issues 1–4

    Founding coeditor. 1993–99. Appendx, Inc.

Selected Awards, Grants, and Fellowships

  • Grant, A. W. Mellon Foundation

    Coprincipal investigator, supporting USC Architecture Paul R. Williams Archive Initiative, $600,000 across three years.
    2024

  • Grant, Ford Foundation

    Principal investigator, supporting USC Architecture Paul R. Williams Archive Initiative, $100,000 across two years.
    2020

  • Urbanism and Humanities Grant, A. W. Mellon Foundation

    Principal investigator, Michigan-Mellon project on egalitarian and the metropolis, $1,300,000 across 4.5 years.

Selected Exhibitions and Presentations

  • Architecture: The Legends Series

    Christie’s Education Program, 2022.

  • Citizen Architect — Paradoxes of Race in Democratic Culture

    Invited lecture, Carl M. Sapers Ethics in Practice, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 2022.

  • Paul R. Williams and the Legacy of Black Aesthetics

    Invited lecture, Rochester Institute of Technology College of Art and Design / Vignelli Center for Design Studies, 2020.

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