Paul R. Williams:
An Architect Considered
Exhibition
Organized jointly by the USC School of Architecture and the USC Fisher Museum of Art, Paul R. Williams: An Architect Considered is the first major exhibition to explore the contributions of groundbreaking architect Paul R. Williams (1894-1980) to modern multifamily housing and urban Black communities. It debuts rarely seen archival drawings, photographs, and plans, and pairs them with newly commissioned works by leading contemporary artists, architects, and filmmakers, reframing Williams’s long under-recognized work and addressing urgent conversations about race, equity, and the future of American cities.
While Williams’s stately homes designed for the wealthy elite have been widely acclaimed, his solutions for affordable multi-family housing have received less attention, even though Williams relentlessly sought to reimagine modernity for a diverse range of clients and users throughout his career.
Highlighting 31 housing projects from his long career, Paul R. Williams: An Architect Considered spotlights Williams’s innovative solutions for collective living, primarily in Los Angeles, during the second Great Migration, a period of rapid urbanization. More than
60 items from the Paul R. Williams’s archive, which was jointly acquired in 2020 by the Getty Research Institute and the USC School of Architecture, are shown in conversation with major new commissions by Edgar Arceneaux; Current Interests (Matthew Au and
Mira Henry), enFOLD Collective (Dana McKinney White and Megan Echols), Darell W. Fields, David Hartt, Cory Henry, and Amanda Williams, as well as a selection of existing works by photographers Julius Shulman and Janna Ireland.
Related Events
An array of public programs complements the exhibition. For information visit PROGRAMS.
Related Exhibitions at Getty and LACMA
Paul R. Williams: Architect for Living, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Nov. 15, 2026–May 31, 2027
Paul R. Williams: Architecture Across the Color Line, Getty Research Institute, Dec. 15, 2026–March 14, 2027
About Paul R. Williams
A pivotal figure in 20th-century architecture and civil rights advocacy who studied architectural engineering at USC, Williams was the first Black architect licensed west of the Mississippi. He was also the first known Black member of the American Institute of Architects nationwide (1923), its first Black Fellow (1957), and the first and only Black architect to receive its highest honor, the Gold Medal (posthumously, 2017). Over a career spanning nearly six decades, he designed more than 3,000 structures, making himone of the most prolific and influential architects of his time.
This exhibition is curated by Valery Augustin, associate professor in the practice of architecture at USC; Milton S.F. Curry, professor of architecture and senior associate dean at Cornell University; and Amy Murphy, professor of architecture and associate dean of faculty affairs at USC. Augustin is exhibition designer, with graphic design by Morcos Key.
Significant funding for this exhibition has been provided by the Mellon Foundation.
All exhibitions are underwritten by the USC Fisher Museum of Art Exhibition Fund. Annual leadership support is generously provided by Boris Dramov and Bonnie Fisher, and by Akieva and Martin Jacobs. Major support is provided by Dana Dramov
McCollough and Brady McCollough.
