The debate over Philip Johnson's past and ongoing legacy continues: after The ---- Johnson Study Group published an open letter calling for all institutions to remove the name of Philip Johnson from "every leadership title, public space, and honorific of any form" in response to the architect's documented Fascist past and support of white supremacy, the Museum of Modern Art, where he was the Director at the Department of Architecture, has now agreed to temporarily cover up Johnson’s name during the run of its current exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America.

A 10-by-10 foot denim textile piece created collaboratively by the nonprofit Black Reconstruction Collective (BRC) and printed with the group's "Manifesting Statement" will greet visitors at the exhibition entrance, blocking the museum's permanent gallery signage.

"We accepted their exhibition design proposal to install the first work of art that visitors will experience — a 10ft x 10ft group work that introduces the exhibition — over the galleries' exterior signage adjacent to the entrance, for the run of Reconstructions," a MoMA spokesperson told Hyperallergic.

The Black Reconstruction Collective includes the ten architects, designers, and artists featured in the exhibition: Emanuel Admassu, Germane Barnes, Sekou Cooke, J. Yolande Daniels, Felecia Davis, Mario Gooden, Walter Hood, Olalekan Jeyifous, V. Mitch McEwen, and Amanda Williams.

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Read the full Manifesting Statement below:

A nation constituted in conflict with its own ideals would need to be reconstructed before it could be fully constructed. It would need to go to war with itself and win, then reconstruct itself differently. This is not rebuilding but reconstructing to the core of governance, citizenship, history, infrastructure, and the distribution of land. Paradoxically, the people who did the constructing and must now do the reconstructing are likely to be the same—laborers in one instance and authors in another—designers of this nation and of themselves.

The Black Reconstruction Collective commits itself to continuing this work of reconstruction in Black America and these United States. We take up the question of what architecture can be—not a tool for imperialism and subjugation, not a means for aggrandizing the self, but a vehicle for liberation and joy. The discipline of architecture has consistently and deliberately avoided participation in this endeavor, operating in complicity with repressive aspects of the current system. That ends now. We commit ourselves to annihilating the willful blinders that have enabled architecture to continue to profess its Eurocentrism as a virtue and claim apolitical ends.

We reject the boundaries established by nation-states, challenge the spatial manifestations of anti-Black racism, and encourage creative agency and liberatory practices. This collective portal unites activists, scholars, architects, artists, and organizers across time and space. With this commitment to Black freedom and futurity, we dedicate ourselves to doing the work of designing another world that is possible, here, where we are, with and for us.

The Black Reconstruction Collective