Student Research on Display at Neill-Cochran House Museum

“Reckoning with the Past: Slavery, Segregation, and Gentrification,” an exhibit based on research conducted by students in Lecturer Tara Dudley’s Fall 2019 “African American Experience in Architecture” seminar is on display at an exhibition at the Neill-Cochran House Museum through the end of the year.

As a part of Dr. Dudley’s Fall 2019 seminar “African American Experience in Architecture,” students conducted extensive archival research, examined previous architectural and archaeological research, and prepared historic contexts on the slave quarters building at the Neill-Cochran House Museum. As the only extant slave quarters building in Austin, located on a property that is grounded in the city’s history from its founding to today, the Neill-Cochran House Museum serves as an ideal resource to discuss slavery and race in Austin. Following the current exhibition, the museum plans to employ the research conducted by Dudley and her students to completely reinterpret the site to honor the lives and labor of the enslaved people who built the original structure, servants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, relationships to the adjacent Wheatville freedmen’s community, and general connections to African American history in Austin.

Student collaborators include: ShaCari Alexander, Hailey Algoe, Michael Anowey, Gabriella Archer, Megan Baker, Eleanor Brauchle, Brooke Burnside, Smita Centala, Elizabeth Cooper, Alison Davis, Alvaro Favela-Ramos, Sierra Moore, Tolu Oliyide, Meaghan-Joyce Pansacola-Rouchon, Anna Parkison, Amber Pufal, Jeffrey Sayles, Tyler Schuetz, Anneleise Sebesta, Pranav Subramanian, Nina Sun, Rishab Vasudevan, and Cameron Young.

For more information about the exhibition and the Neill-Cochran House Museum, visit: https://www.nchmuseum.org/reckoning-with-the-past/

Photos courtesy Neill-Cochran House Museum