Fantasizing Design Exhibition Closing Celebration

Please join us for a final celebration of Fantasizing Design: Phyllis Birkby Builds Lesbian Feminist Architecture, before it closes on September 2! 

The evening will begin with a conversation with exhibition curators Stephen Vider and M.C. Overholt, moderated by Brandi Howell, producer of New Angle: Voice, a podcast by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation focused on the history of women in architecture. Vider and Overholt will consider how the exhibition has reshaped their own understandings of Birkby, and share new fantasy drawings created by visitors.

Their conversation will be followed by a keynote lecture by artist Finnegan Shannon. Prompted by the exhibition, Finnegan Shannon will discuss where fantasy lives in their practice. They'll touch on sensory pleasures, the luxury of options, and the ways that Phyllis Birkby's notion of the "messiness of life" makes fantasies richer and more potent.

Real-time CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) captioning will be provided for this event.

About the speakers:
Finnegan Shannon is an artist experimenting with forms of access. They intervene in ableist structures with humor, earnestness, and rage. Some of their recent work includes Alt Text as Poetry, a collaboration with Bojana Coklyat that explores the expressive potential of image description; Do You Want Us Here or Not, a series of benches and cushions designed for exhibition spaces; and Don’t mind if I do, a conveyor-belt-centered exhibition that prioritizes rest and play. They have done projects with MUDAM Luxembourg, the Queens Museum, moCa Cleveland, the High Line, MMK Frankfurt, MCA Denver, and Nook Gallery. Their work has been supported by a Wynn Newhouse Award, an Eyebeam fellowship, a Disability Futures Fellowship, a United States Artists Fellowship, and grants from Art Matters Foundation, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Disability Visibility Project. Their work has been written about in Art in America, BOMB Magazine, the Believer, and Out Magazine. They live and work in Brooklyn, NY.

Stephen Vider is associate professor of history and co-director of Gender and Sexuality Studies at Bryn Mawr College. His first book, The Queerness of Home: Gender, Sexuality, and the Politics of Domesticity (University of Chicago Press, 2021), received honorable mention for the American Studies Association’s 2022 John Hope Franklin Prize for best book in American studies and was one of six finalists for the Huntington Library’s 2023 Shapiro Prize for outstanding first scholarly book in American history. In 2017, he curated the exhibition AIDS at Home: Art and Everyday Activism for the Museum of the City of New York. He was also co-curator of the exhibition Gay Gotham: Art and Underground Culture in New York (Museum of the City of New York, 2016–17) and co-author of the accompanying book. 

M.C. Overholt is a PhD candidate in the History and Theory of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design and a graduate of the Master of Environmental Design (M.E.D.) program at the Yale School of Architecture. Her scholarly work—which has appeared in venues including Public Culture, Platform, and the forthcoming collection In the Daylight of Our Existence: Architectural History and the Promise of Queer Theory (edited by S.E. Eisterer)—uses queer and feminist-of-color analytical frameworks to reread interlocking histories of modern architecture and the sciences. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute, Visiting Lecturer at Bryn Mawr College, and a co-editor of Perspecta 57, the oldest student-edited architectural journal in the United States. 

Brandi Howell is an experienced audio producer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Much of her documentary work focuses on exploring the little known stories that shaped the urban and counterculture landscapes of 20th century US history. Since 2021, she has worked closely with the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation to develop and produce their award-winning podcast, New Angle: Voice, which focuses on the lives and careers of pioneering women in architecture. Her work can also be heard in audio guides produced for MoMA, SFMOMA, and stories for Afropop Worldwide, America’s Test Kitchen, and other museums and public media outlets. In addition to Howell’s own production work, she works with The Kitchen Sisters, the Peabody award winning independent producers who create stories for NPR and other public media, where she has worked as a producer for over ten years. 

About the Exhibition:
Fantasizing Design: Phyllis Birkby Builds Lesbian Feminist Architecture traces the life, work, and networks of lesbian feminist architect Phyllis Birkby (1932–1994), who pushed design professionals and the public to imagine a built environment beyond the confines of existing male-dominated forms. Inspired by the women’s movement and gay liberation, she joined one of the first lesbian feminist consciousness-raising groups, staged a feminist building occupation, and co-founded the Women’s School of Planning and Architecture. Her most groundbreaking intervention, however, was a series of workshops  that encouraged women to imagine and draw their “fantasy environments”—the home and community spaces they would like to inhabit. Fantasizing Design takes Birkby and her circle of friends, lovers, and collaborators as a lens on the broader ways feminists and lesbian feminists have worked to remake architectural practice, domestic space, and the broader built environment.

Organized by Center for Architecture; Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (BWAF)