Archival / Record of Work
The First Five Years (2021-2026)
September 2026
In Fall of 2026, Takoma will celebrate its 5th year of service to the Smithsonian. With over 150 exhibitions edited and major publications from Smithsonian Books to boot, our years-long commitment shows our passion for telling America’s most important stories. Every assignment is carefully considered, expertly wrought, and lovingly maintained. We pour over every detail, every word and sentence, for days, weeks and even months, helping the Smithsonian to tell its most important stories. In The First Five Years (2021-2026), we look back on our achievement and prepare for the next five years to come.
Essay / Criticism
The Museum Voice
December 2026
What is the role of museums in the first few decades of the 21st century? How should museums respond to seismic change outside their doors? In this brief monoscript, Malik Wilson makes a bold, somewhat counterintuitive claim that in times of great upheaval, the steady, sure hand of museums and their centuries old voice - stoic, solemn, restrained - is needed more than ever. By appealing to museums' function as "sanctuaries of the soul", The Museum Voice describes how beauty, and artistic pleasure exists on an ontological plane fully apart from material notions of sex, race, and nationality. Restraint, in this vein, isn't moral cowardice but spiritual courage - it imports, and imparts to the viewer a vast and settled trust, an implicit belief that he or she possesses the requisite ability to ford his or her way home.
Essay / Criticism
The Beauty of Preservation
September 2026
What we decide to keep, and what we let go of - culturally, materially, spiritually, and socially, frames human effort and human endurance. In the art world, those who toil at preservation - both on buildings and in the broader material culture of artwork and textiles - perform a kind of holy yeomanship. Unseen, often unknown, their work carries a kind of salutary passage that allows others to partake in the common good. In The Beauty of Preservation, Malik Wilson advances the notion that the Grand Questions of preservation are soulful ones, and that it is in imposing them that we have the best chance to arise at a qualified end.