Extension Gallery is an experimental forum for testing new thought and practice in architecture. It is a platform for dialog between national and international practices and investigation of the relations between architecture and other disciplines. The gallery commissions architects that adopt a diverse set of architectural theories to design and construct site-specific installations that transform the gallery space with their work and allow visitors to explore and experience current architectural thought in practice.
Dresser Trunk Project
The Dresser Trunk Project curated by William Daryl Williams, is the recovery of lost stories, memories, and places of refuge for traveling black musicians playing in the Chitlin’Circuit during segregation. Inspired by the Cornell boxes, eleven participants designed trunks that each tells the story of a place of refuge in an era of segregation. The place include a hotel, a residence, a club, a section of a train station or even a Negro League baseball park. The stories will include who passed through and how their experiences at that location may have influenced culture and music. All places are located in a city served by the Southern Crescent Line.
Eleven cities have been identified from New York to New Orleans. For each city, a dresser trunk was designed similar to those used by musicians on their travels. The trunks contain stories, photographs, maps, hotel registers, and images of the way places looked during their travels and speculations on their future. The trunks are planned to tour each of the eleven sites by train, and will be exhibited in an Amtrak train car. Before the exhibition gets on its trail, it will be exhibited at Extension.
The Dresser Trunk Project is significant in its preservation of a unique cultural heritage that is being lost to the ravages of time and the pressures of development. It strives to link isolated places together in a chain that gives each their rightful place in architectural, music and cultural history.
Participants: Felecia Davis, Yolande Daniels, William Daryl Williams, Lisa Henry-Benham, Mabel Wilson, Mario Gooden, David Brown, Craig Barton, Scott Ruff, Nat Belcher and Walter Hood.
The exhibition was sponsored by Extension Gallery and Podmajersky, Inc.
September 14th through October 14th 2007.
http://www.williamdarylwilliams.com/Site/DTP_Gallery.html#0
