Karin Lee George said she had tears in her eyes but a smile on her face when she looked at her father’s life immortalized in framed pictures and sketches hanging on a wall in Slocum Hall.

Her father, Kermit Lee Jr., died in 2018 and was the first Black graduate of Syracuse University’s School of Architecture. In dedication, Syracuse’s National Organization of Minority Architecture Students chapter created an exhibit honoring his legacy and named it “The Living Room Conversation: In Memory of Professor Kermit J. Lee Jr.”

The exhibition features Lee’s drawings from his time as a student, including ancient world architecture. But the exhibit is also personal; small framed family photos stand on pedestals and images of Lee growing up also hang in the room. All artifacts were picked by curators and architecture students Benson Joseph and Parinda Pin Sangkaeo.

The exhibit opened in the Marble Room in Slocum Hall on Feb. 3. It will run until Feb. 27 along with a continuation of the exhibit “Left,” a compilation of drawings Lee created after suffering from a stroke. Those drawings will be displayed outside of the King + King Architecture Library on the third floor of Slocum Hall.

“Students really captured him and understood a man I don’t think any of them have met,” George said. “He’d be grinning.”

Even at the earliest stages of Lee’s life, he had the innate desire to become an architect. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology but was discriminated against by other students because of his race.

Lee taught at SU until 1995. He was the first Black graduate of Syracuse University’s School of Architecture. Courtesy of Karin Lee George

Soon after, Lee came to Syracuse and became the first Black graduate of the School of Architecture in 1957. After graduation, with a stop in Germany as a Fulbright Scholar, Lee remained in Europe working as an architect.

Then, in 1968, he was invited by SU’s vice chancellor for academic affairs at the time, Frank Piskor, to teach at SU. Lee accepted the offer and became the first Black professor in the School of Architecture.

Lee taught at SU until 1995. In his time teaching, he also led an architectural firm with a colleague, all while raising a family in Syracuse.

“He was a lot of firsts and onlys,” DJ Butler, SU’s NOMAS chapter president and architecture graduate student, said.

In 2019, SU’s NOMAS chapter saw a lack of celebration during Black History Month in the School of Architecture, something that Butler wanted to see rectified by the time he graduated.

Butler heard Lee’s name mentioned by prominent SU Black alumni at a NOMA conference in the fall. Syracuse’s chapter eventually gained first place in a competition with other universities’ NOMAS chapters competing from across the country. Butler then took to LinkedIn to celebrate the occasion, and George reached out saying how proud her father would have been.

While the exhibit for Lee is new, Sangkaeo said collaborating with on-campus architectural librarian Barbara Opar made recovering Lee’s works and personal family photo donations significantly easier.

The exhibit memorializing Lee features drawings from his time as an architecture student, as well as photos from his childhood. Lucy Messineo Witt | Staff Photographer

Together, Sangkaeo and Joseph categorized each one into four separate sections of Lee’s life: student, teacher, architect and person. They photocopied the majority of Lee’s lifework, except for his student drawings. Joseph said they wanted to showcase his originals in order for viewers to see the precise detail.

The opening ceremony for “The Living Room Conversation: In Memory of Professor Kermit J. Lee Jr.” contained a talk from the dean of the School of Architecture, Michael Speaks, and Butler. George also spoke more about her father’s life and what he went through in a PowerPoint.

SU’s NOMAS chapter will also be hosting other events during February, such as an open mic night on Friday, Feb. 21 at 6:30 p.m. and lecture speakers Renee Kemp-Rotan and Tya Winn on Feb. 27.

But the exhibit is not just to show Lee’s life. NOMAS also wanted a place for people to hold discussion about important topics — just like in a family living room, Joseph said. To attract students into the exhibit, Joseph and Sangkaeo brought down a large wooden, scratched-up table from floor three of Slocum Hall and put it in the middle of the exhibit. Students now use the exhibit to do work and also talk.

“It’s not simply an exhibition,” Benson said. “It’s the scope of the whole celebration.”

Published on February 20, 2020 at 12:02 am

Contact Christopher: cscargla@syr.edu | @chrisscargs