More than five million people have visited the National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C., since it opened in September 2016, according to the Smithsonian Institution's visitor stats. Whether or not you're one of them, you can catch a film about the evolution of its award-winning design this Wednesday, February 20, when the Architecture + Design Film Series screens The Black Museum at Burlington City Hall Auditorium. Prefacing the screening is a locally focused event that promises to be just as arresting. The series' founding curators — Lynda McIntyre, Andrew Chardain and Karen Frost — have invited Lydia Clemmons to give a talk and show a video about the Clemmons Family Farm in Charlotte. Clemmons, the second of five children in an African American family, grew up on a 148-acre farm that is now one of the most beautiful properties on Greenbush Road. Her parents, Jackson and Lydia Clemmons, a pathologist and nurse anesthetist, respectively, bought the farm in 1962. Lydia Clemmons Jr., who works as an international public-health advisor in several African countries, returned six years ago to live on the farm with her parents, who are now both 95. They are working to transform the family farm into a cultural destination. What's the connection between the national museum and a Vermont farm? An African American architect named Zena Howard. As Clemmons will detail in her talk, she learned while tracking the D.C. museum's development that Howard, a principal in the global firm Perkins+Will and managing director of its North Carolina practice, was the senior project manager. Shortly before the African American museum opened, Clemmons cold-called Howard to ask her to help lead the redesign of the Big Barn, as the family calls an early-1800s structure on their Charlotte farm. The architect took up the project pro bono. Howard is one of roughly 0.3 percent of licensed architects in the country who are female and African American, according to a 2017 article in Curbed magazine. That makes her as rare in her world as Clemmons' parents are in theirs, Clemmons recognized. According to Clemmons' calculations, derived from 2012 census information and the historically black colleges and universities database, only 0.4 percent of U.S. farmland is African American-owned. And in Vermont, she calculates, only about 19 of the state's 7,300 farms belong to African Americans. Howard has also worked on the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum…
More than five million people have visited the National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C., since it opened in September 2016, according to the Smithsonian Institution's visitor stats. Whether or not you're one of them, you can catch a film about the evolution of its award-winning design this Wednesday, February 20, when the Architecture + Design Film Series screens The Black Museum at Burlington City Hall Auditorium. Prefacing the screening is a locally focused event that promises to be just as arresting. The series' founding curators — Lynda McIntyre, Andrew Chardain and Karen Frost — have invited Lydia Clemmons to give a talk and show a video about the Clemmons Family Farm in Charlotte. Clemmons, the second of five children in an African American family, grew up on a 148-acre farm that is now one of the most beautiful properties on Greenbush Road. Her parents, Jackson and Lydia Clemmons, a pathologist and nurse anesthetist, respectively, bought the farm in 1962. Lydia Clemmons Jr., who works as an international public-health advisor in several African countries, returned six years ago to live on the farm with her parents, who are now both 95. They are working to transform the family farm into a cultural destination. What's the connection between the national museum and a Vermont farm? An African American architect named Zena Howard. As Clemmons will detail in her talk, she learned while tracking the D.C. museum's development that Howard, a principal in the global firm Perkins+Will and managing director of its North Carolina practice, was the senior project manager. Shortly before the African American museum opened, Clemmons cold-called Howard to ask her to help lead the redesign of the Big Barn, as the family calls an early-1800s structure on their Charlotte farm. The architect took up the project pro bono. Howard is one of roughly 0.3 percent of licensed architects in the country who are female and African American, according to a 2017 article in Curbed magazine. That makes her as rare in her world as Clemmons' parents are in theirs, Clemmons recognized. According to Clemmons' calculations, derived from 2012 census information and the historically black colleges and universities database, only 0.4 percent of U.S. farmland is African American-owned. And in Vermont, she calculates, only about 19 of the state's 7,300 farms belong to African Americans. Howard has also worked on the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum…