Yes And: Miller Prize Conversation with Studio Barnes

Join 2024-25 J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize Recipient Germane Barnes of Studio Barnes in conversation with special guest Joseph Zeal-Henry, who is the Director of Cultural Planning for The City of Boston and is an assistant professor at Columbia GSAPP. Hosted at Indiana University’s J. Irwin Miller Architecture Program, this conversation will be opened with a poetry reading by Indiana Author Award Honoree Mitchell L. H. Douglas.

A reception with Germane, Jospeh, and Mitchell will take place at 6:30 pm, and the conversation will begin around 6:45 pm, with time for questions to follow. Joy Riding is one of the 13 installations in the 2025 Exhibit Columbus Exhibition, Yes And.

About Miller Prize Conversations

Landmark Columbus Foundation will host the Exhibit Columbus J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize Conversations in collaboration with Indiana University's J. Irwin Miller Architecture Program and Indiana Humanities.

Each conversation will begin with a reading from an Indiana poet. Then, the Miller Prize Recipient and a special guest will engage in a moderated open discussion about their previous work and practice, and how it relates to their Exhibit Columbus Installation as part of the 2025 exhibition Yes And.

Guests are invited to arrive early for a reception featuring the Miller Prize Recipient and a special guest.

About the J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize

The J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize honors two great patrons of community, architecture, art, and design. J. Irwin Miller was a community leader in Columbus with a national reputation in business and activism. Irwin and his wife Xenia, helped bring twentieth-century architectural masterpieces to Columbus through public-private coalitions, today known as the “Columbus Way.”

Now in its 10th year, the Miller Prize brings architectural excellence fostered by the Millers into dialogue with the best of twenty-first-century art and design, making it relevant to new audiences. By collaborating with architects, artists, and designers, the Millers’ lifelong effort was to help make Columbus the best possible community of its size. Since 2016, Exhibit Columbus has recognized 19 studios with this distinction.

About the J. Irwin Miller Architecture Program at Indiana University

Artistic experimentation and architectural design flourish simultaneously at Indiana University’s NAAB-accredited J. Irwin Miller Architecture Program. Our unique curricular model is rooted in hands-on making and engages with the ecological, material, social, and theoretical context of contemporary practice. We are located in the heart of downtown Columbus, Indiana where an extensive architectural legacy is at our doorstep and serves as a living case study in design excellence. Students and faculty are vested in the city’s evolution through community partnerships, stakeholder engagement, and design-build initiatives. We also foster a global perspective through the Nomadic Studio, which provides funded opportunities to live and learn in culturally vibrant and active urban centers.

About the Indiana Authors Awards 

The Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Awards honor the best books written by Indiana authors. Awarded every two years, they celebrate Indiana writers, shine a light on the Hoosier state’s literary community and deepen connections between Indiana writers and readers. They were established in 2009 as a vision of Eugene and Marilyn Glick and are a component of Indiana Humanities’ rich and diverse literary programming. 

About Indiana Humanities   

Indiana Humanities sparks curiosity, connects people, and explores the human experience through programs, grants, and storytelling. Learn more at www.IndianaHumanities.org.  

Studio Barnes is led by Germane Barnes (pictured), an Associate Professor and Director of the Master of Architecture Graduate Program at the University of Miami School of Architecture. Studio Barnes investigates the connection between architecture and identity, examining architecture’s social and political agency through historical research and design speculation. Mining architecture’s social and political agency, Studio Barnes examines how the built environment influences black domesticity. Born in Chicago, Germane Barnes received a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Master of Architecture from Woodbury University. The Studio Barnes team includes Gabriel Soomar and Francesca Picard.

Joseph Zeal-Henry is a designer and curator currently serving as Director of Cultural Planning for The City of Boston and is an assistant professor at Columbia GSAPP. He has written for Tank Magazine, Dezeen and Casabella. Joseph was selected as the 2024 Artlab/Loeb Fellow at Harvard University GSD. 

In 2022, the British Council selected Joseph to co-curate the British Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023. The pavilion, 'Dancing Before the Moon,' explores the need for architecture to look beyond buildings and economic structures and towards everyday social practices. 

Joseph worked for the Mayor of London in the Culture & Creative Industries Unit, delivering new cultural infrastructure for London. Joseph worked on the New London Museum, East Bank and the Thames Estuary Production Corridor. In 2019 co-founded the social enterprise platform Sound Advice to explore new forms of spatial practice through music. In 2020, they published the book NOW YOU KNOW. 

Mitchell L. H. Douglas is the author of dying in the scarecrow’s arms, \blak\ \al-fə bet\, winner of the Persea Books Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor's Choice Award, and cooling board: a long-playing poem, an NAACP Image Award and Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominee. His “Poem that Begins w/a Tweet About Gwendolyn Brooks” was featured in This is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets edited by New York Times best-selling author Kwame Alexander. A 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, he is Associate Professor of English at Indiana University Indianapolis, a Cave Canem alum, and cofounder of the Affrilachian Poets. His visual art has been published in The Adroit Journal, The Offing, and Callaloo. His fourth poetry collection, Universal Corner, will be published by Persea Books in 2026.

Info: Enjoy light refreshments with Germane Barnes, Joseph Zeal-Henry, and Mitchell L. H. Douglas.

Info: Poetry reading by an Indiana Author Award Honoree, a moderated discussion with Germane Barnes and Joseph Zeal-Henry, and time for community questions.

Host or Publisher Exhibit Columbus