Sean Anderson

Sean Anderson was the Associate Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) before returning to Cornell as an Associate Professor in Architecture. A Fellow of the American Academy in Rome with a Ph.D. in African Art History, he has practiced as an architect and taught in Afghanistan, Australia, India, Italy, Morocco, Sri Lanka, and the United Arab Emirates. He has authored books on South Asian ritual sculpture and the modern architecture of colonial Eritrea and coedited a volume dedicated to contemporary architecture and design in Sri Lanka. He is widely published in art and architecture books and media. In 2020, he cocurated the exhibition On Muzharul Islam: Surfacing Intention, and in 2023, he curated To Enter the Sky, both at the Dhaka Art Summit in Dhaka, Bangladesh. At MoMA, he organized the exhibitions Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter (2016–17); Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959-89 (2017–18); and four iterations of the Young Architects Program at MoMA PS1. He was responsible for and collaborated on multiple permanent collection galleries at MoMA, including Building Citizens and Surrounds. He co-organized with Mabel O. Wilson Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, the first exhibition ever at MoMA to highlight the work of African American and African Diasporic architects in 2021. He is a founding member of the Board of Trustees and today serves on the Board of Advisors for the African Futures Institute (AFI) in Accra, Ghana.

Related News

• Cornell AAP Alumni, Faculty, and Students Answer 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale's Call to Rethink the Built Environment in an Era of Climate Challenge
• Student Showcase: ForestCity: Gayogo̱hó:nǫ
• Mabel O. Wilson: Absence, Presence, and the Incomplete Archive
• Dhaka Art Summit Opens Today
• Tribute: Balkrishna Doshi (1927–2023)

Awards, Grants, and Fellowships (Selected)

• Rome Prize in Modern Italian Studies (2005)
• Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa Fellowship (2005–06)

Exhibitions and Presentations (Selected)

• Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America (MoMA, 2021)
• Building Citizens (MoMA, 2019–22)
• Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age (MoMA, 2017–18)
• Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter (MoMA, 2016–17)

Publications (Selected)

• Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, with Mabel O. Wilson, eds. (MoMA, 2021)
• Modern Architecture and its Representation in Colonial Eritrea. (Routledge, 2015)
• Flames of Devotion: Oil Lamps from South and Southeast Asia and the Himalayas. (UCLA-Fowler, 2006)