Three Los Angeles Exhibitions Reframe Paul R. Williams's Legacy

Los Angeles is staging its most expansive reconsideration yet of architect Paul R. Williams, with three institutions using his newly accessible archive to tell distinct parts of a career that reshaped the city. Williams designed more than 3,000 projects over nearly six decades, from celebrity residences and hotels to churches, civic buildings, and affordable housing.

The season is significant because it refuses to reduce Williams to the familiar label “architect to the stars.” Together, exhibitions at USC Fisher Museum of Art, LACMA, and the Getty Research Institute place his formal range beside his work for Black communities and his sustained interest in collective living.

Three exhibitions, three perspectives

Paul R. Williams: An Architect Considered, at USC Fisher through March 13, 2027, concentrates on 31 multifamily housing projects. More than 60 archival objects appear alongside new commissions by artists and architects including Edgar Arceneaux, Amanda Williams, David Hartt, and Current Interests.

Opening November 15 in the Resnick Pavilion, Paul R. Williams: Architect for Living broadens the view. LACMA draws together never-before-exhibited photographs and drawings spanning residential, religious, commercial, hospitality, and civic work. The exhibition runs through May 31, 2027.

The Getty completes the sequence on December 15 with Paul R. Williams: Architecture Across the Color Line. On view through March 14, 2027, it focuses on how Williams built with and for Black Los Angeles while navigating the structures of segregation that defined his profession and city.

Williams was the first Black architect licensed west of the Mississippi, the first known Black member of the American Institute of Architects, and the first Black recipient of the AIA Gold Medal, awarded posthumously in 2017. The coordinated exhibitions make his archive public at a scale proportionate to that history.

Source: LA Weekly. Exhibition details verified with LACMA, USC Fisher Museum of Art, and the Getty.

Featured image: Julius Shulman, Paul R. Williams presenting an architectural model, Getty Research Institute; Julius Shulman Photography Archive. Courtesy LACMA.