Just Places Lab

In several ongoing initiatives, Minner and students in the Just Places Lab have been exploring the ways in which art and creative place-making contribute to building and preserving the city - including its social identities, built environment, sense of place, and memories. Jennifer Minner has taught courses that bring together explorations in these domains including: Just Places? Community Preservation, Art, and Equity (Spring 2019); and Art, Preservation, and the Just City (Spring 2020), and Art Re-Building Cities (Spring 2021).

These classes have incorporated engagements with artists and nonprofit organizations. Community partners have included Dennis Maher and Assembly House 150, Enterprise Community Partners, and Planning Consultant and Cornell Alumni Wylie Goodman. Additional guests have included artist Jade Doskow; Jenna Dublin from Columbia University, presenting on the study of preservation and cultural displacement; Barb Nelson presenting on the three-city art installation Breathing Lights; Julia Taylor of Civic Ensemble; among others. Minner also hosted visiting artist in residence Jonathan Jones.

Read more about the Spring 2019 field trip featured in the Cornell magazine.

Minner is a Collaborating Educator with Assembly House 150, a nonprofit directed by artist, architect, and educator Dennis Maher and a professor in the Department of Architecture at University at Buffalo.  Assembly House 150 is a dynamic, experiential learning center that transforms lives and the built environment through art, design, and construction. Maher is also the creator of The Fargo House, "an immersive experiment in art and living that that blends the intimacy of a house, its uses, and spaces with the imagined flows of objects, people, places and memories."