Ms. Adwoa Serwaah Adusei
MA candidate at The Institute of Fine Arts, NYU
MS candidate at The Palmer School of Library and Information Science, Long Island University.

I am conducting research about library and museum architecture in the Caribbean, first, here in Nassau and then in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. I’m interested in how concepts of vernacularity have changed throughout the 20th and 21st century.  Debates about concrete Caribbean Modern Architecture/Modern Caribbean Architecture versus vernacular/traditional forms and materials have served as  platforms of contestation which then tie interestingly into the historical development of cultural institutions.

The heart of the thesis is to problematize whether issues of accessibility to cultural institutions are best addressed by vernacular styles, methods, and materials or by Western colonial and modern architectural techniques.

A subsequent part of my research has led to the creation of an online mapping website of cultural institutions (large and small) in the Anglophone Caribbean, with hopes of eventually spreading to the larger Caribbean and Latin America.

~Adwoa Serwaah Adusei