Installation photo credit: Josh White

Vielmetter Los Angeles congratulates Edgar Arceneaux on his inclusion in the exhibition Paul R. Williams: An Architect Considered, on view at the USC Fisher Museum of Art from August 18th, 2026 through March 13th, 2027.

Organized jointly by the USC School of Architecture and the USC Fisher Museum of Art, this is the first major exhibition to explore the contributions of groundbreaking architect Paul R. Williams (1894-1980) to modern multifamily housing and urban Black communities. It debuts rarely seen archival drawings, photographs, and plans, and pairs them with newly commissioned works by leading contemporary artists, architects, and filmmakers, reframing Williams’s long under-recognized work and addressing urgent conversations about race, equity, and the future of American cities.

Highlighting 31 housing projects from his long career, Paul R. Williams: An Architect Considered spotlights Williams’s innovative solutions for collective living, primarily in Los Angeles, during the second Great Migration, a period of rapid urbanization. More than 60 items from the Paul R. Williams’s archive are shown in conversation with commissions by Edgar Arceneaux; Current Interests (Matthew Au and Mira Henry), enFOLD Collective (Dana McKinney White and Megan Echols), Darell W. Fields, David Hartt, Cory Henry, and Amanda Williams, as well as a selection of existing works by photographers Julius Shulman and Janna Ireland. Arceneaux’s work, titled Paul Revere Williams’s Stairs #1 (A Gift to His Wife), incorporates his signature amalgam of silver nitrate, acrylic, and mirrored glass on canvas, arranged in a composition that echoes Williams’ distinct approach to color and form.