Illustration used on the cover of the 2016 McDermott Award Gala Invitations.

Invitation to the 2016 award gala includes four 5×7″ cards with vellum belly band. The award recipient, David Adjaye, designed the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. The cover card contains an adaptation of the museum’s facade pattern debossed with clear foil onto a black paper.

Invitation to the 2016 award gala includes four 5×7″ cards with vellum belly band. The award recipient, David Adjaye, designed the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. The cover card contains an adaptation of the museum’s facade pattern debossed with clear foil onto a black paper.

The 2016 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT was given to Architect David Adjaye at a celebratory gala dinner in April 2016. The invitations to the gala included a matte black cover page with a debossed and clear foil stamped illustration. The illustration is a stylized reference to the patterned facade on one of David Adjaye’s buildings – the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington, D.C. The NMAAHC building is wrapped in an ornamental bronze-colored metal lattice, which Adjaye and the other architects used to pay homage to the intricate ironwork that was crafted by enslaved African Americans in Louisiana, South Carolina, and elsewhere.