Power of Place | Biographies
Craig Barton is chair of the Department of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Virginia. He joined the UVA faculty in 1995 having previously taught at Columbia University and the City College of the City University of New York. Barton was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design.
Barton investigates cultural and historic preservation and their interpretation through architecture and urban design. Much of his practice focuses on assisting African-American communities to preserve and interpret their significant cultural resources and to utilize them to stimulate community development. He is author and editor of the anthology, Sites of Memory: Perspectives on Architecture and Race and has contributed to a range of anthologies including Writing Urbanism.
Barton is a founding principal in the architectural firm RB Studio, located in Charlottesville, VA. Some of the firm’s recent projects include a master plan for the town of Bayview, a historic African-American community on Virginia’s Eastern Shore and the design of a museum and visitors’ center in Selma, AL for the National Voting Rights Museum, part of the National Park Service’s National Voting Historic Trail.
Laurie Beckelman is recognized through her expertise in cultural and preservation management and policy. She is co-founder and President of Beckelman+Capalino, a company that provides a wide range of project management and strategic advisory services to cultural, not-for-profit and historic preservation clients. Their work involves team building, the development of sustainable institutions, and the successful completion of highly complex and varied projects.
Beckelman, served as Director of the New Building Program for the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD). She was Deputy Director of Special Projects at the Guggenheim Museum, Vice President of World Monuments Fund and also served as Chair of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.
James Carpenter is considered a leading architectural designer with a strong background in developing new and emerging glass and material technologies. His interest in architecture and structure has evolved into a unique design practice and studio, James Carpenter Design Associates, a multi-disciplinary architectural design firm with a specific focus on the exploration and management of light. The firm specializes in both the aesthetic and functional development and documentation of enclosure systems, glass structures and skylights, and specialty construction on building skins.
Eames Demetrios wears many hats in his career, including film maker, multimedia artist, consultant, and exhibition designer. As director of the Eames Office, he spearheaded the successful re-discovery of the Charles and Ray Eames design heritage. In every project, he brings out the adventurous side of his creative partners, including the Library of Congress, Portugal's Gulbenkian Foundation, Universal Studios, and Interface, Inc, among others.
Demetrios has made more than 40 films and videos, written three books and spoken on a wide range of topics around the world. Themes include a fiction feature on homelessness, a documentary on Sambo Mockbee's Rural Studio, and a website that carries forward where the landmark Eames film, Powers of Ten, left off. His current large-scale project, Kymaerica, is a multi-pronged, ongoing reinterpretation of the North American landscape.
Dorothy Dunn is Director of Visitor Experience at the Philip Johnson Glass House, a National Trust Site. As a member of the leadership team that launched the public opening of the site in 2007, she designed the public tour, initiated strategic partnerships, developed products, and produced new program models to position the site as a context and catalyst for innovation and new ideas. Dunn is project director for the Glass House Oral History Project and Glass House Conversations.
Dunn was the recipient of the inaugural Smithsonian Education Achievement Award in 2004 in recognition of her leadership as Education Director for Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. While at the Smithsonian, from 1989 through 2004, she launched signature programs, including City of Neighborhoods, Summer Design Institute, and Design Directions, developed numerous conferences and invitational study tours and retreats, including Icons of Modernism: LA and Palm Springs, The Architecture of Landscape and Light, and Craft and Design: Hand, Mind and the Creative Process. She was formerly Program Director for AIGA, the professional design association and repositioned the International Design Conference at Aspen, now the Aspen Design Summit, the world’s oldest forum for business and design leaders.
Dorothy Cann Hamilton is one of the most influential forces shaping the American culinary landscape today. She is the founder of New York City’s International Culinary Center, the prestigious French Culinary Institute and The Italian Culinary Academy. The International Culinary Center, founded in 2006, is the realization of Hamilton’s vision of a destination where the top talent in every culinary discipline from around the globe frequently visit to hone, discuss, and teach their craft to the next generation of elite chefs, food professionals and enthusiasts.
Hamilton conceived and hosted a 26-part television series called Chef’s Story, which debuted on PBS in April 2007. She has served as the Chairwoman of the James Beard Foundation Board of Trustees and is Chairwoman Emeritus for life of The American Institute of Wine and Food. Hamilton has received numerous awards and honors, including the Chevalier du Mérite Agricole (Agricultural Merit Knighthood) from the French government; a knighting by the Association Internationale de Maîtres Conseil dans la Gastronomie Française; the Outstanding American Educator award from Madrid Fusion, the Diplôme d’Honneur of the Vatel Club des Etats-Unis, and Dame de l’Anée of the Académie Culinaire de France in 2006. In 2001, Hamilton received the prestigious Ordre National du Mérite (National Order of Merit Award) from the French government, a designation second only to the legendary Legion of Honor.
Rainer Judd has directed short films, documentaries, and music videos. Her short film Remember Back, Remember When, inspired by her childhood, premiered recently at the 37th International Film Festival Rotterdam. She has worked with directors such as Francis Coppola, Sofia Coppola, Neil Burger, Terry Gilliam, and Gus Van Sant. As an actor, she has worked under directors Janusz Kaminski, Michael Rhymer, Peter Chelsom, Peter Hyams, Robert Downey Sr. and others. Born in New York City and raised in SoHo and Marfa, TX, she graduated from NYU Film. Her thesis film Plague Circuit, adapted from a Robert Sheckley short story, won the Texas Award at the USA Film Festival in Dallas, TX. Judd’s drawings and photographs have been exhibited in Los Angeles, New York, and Austin, TX. In 2007, she was a recipient of Art Production Fund’s Artist Residency Grant at the Fondation Claude Monet in Giverny, France. In 2008, her feature in WONDERBREAaD was a finalist for the Sundance Writer’s Lab.
Judd is President of the Board of Judd Foundation, founded by the late Donald Judd to preserve his artworks in their place in SoHo and Marfa, TX and to create a greater understanding of his ideas and work. She is also board member of Blue Ocean Institute, founded by marine biologist Carl Safina, to inspire a closer relationship with the sea through science, art and literature.
Christy MacLear is the Executive Director of the Philip Johnson Glass House. She was brought to the National Trust for Historic Preservation to develop the strategy, hire all staff and prepare the site and Visitor Center to open to the public in June 2007. With the goal to "reshape the historic house museum model", Christy and the staff team of the Glass House have sold out tours through 2009, launched a survey of 90+ modern homes in New Canaan, structured a "center for Modernism" to co-lead the National Trust's investment in Modernist preservation, launched the Glass House Oral History project, managed the NTHP board approval to purchase adjacent properties to preserve the Glass House view in perpetuity, and developed Conversations to continue the legacy of new ideas through diverse leaders on-site.
MacLear is known for her ability to conceive of and lead large-scale projects through opening and on-going operations. She was the Manager of Strategy for the Walt Disney Company's new town project called Celebration, was the Director of the Museum Campus in Chicago where she represented 3 museum boards through the movement of Lake Shore Drive and the creation of a lakefront park, and was an independent consultant in Strategy & Visitor Experience to such clients as the Field Museum, the Cleveland Clinic and the leaders of the UAE. She has a degree in Urban Design from Stanford University and an MBA from Wharton in Real Estate Finance where she received a Barnes fellowship. She has been a professor in the graduate program of Arts Administration for the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and has served on the boards of Chicago's Three Arts Club, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and Steppingstones Museum for Children.
Chef Nils Norén is the Vice President of Culinary Arts of The French Culinary Institute and The Italian Culinary Academy, both of which reside in New York City’s International Culinary Center. Chef Nils is the embodiment of the new international chef: disciplined in the classic sensibilities and driven by immense creativity. Previously, he served as Executive Chef for Aquavit. During his tenure there, Chef Nils helped to demonstrate to the world the fine tastes and techniques of Swedish cooking. Prior to joining Aquavit, Chef Nils worked in Stockholm as Executive Chef at Restaurant Riche, which features a fine dining room, tapas bar and bistro; and as Chef de Cuisine at Restaurant KB, one of the country’s classic Swedish restaurants in the center of town. A graduate of Culinary School in Gävle, Sweden, Chef Nils also coordinated cooking classes for Restaurant Akademin.
Richard D. Story is editor in chief of Departures, the leading authority on luxury lifestyle, published by the American Express Publishing Corporation for American Express Platinum Card® and Centurion® members. Under Story's helm, Departures has been nominated for three consecutive national magazine awards which it won in 2007 in the category - Best Single Topic Issue - for The Latin Issue October 2007. Story also oversees Black Ink, a quarterly publication exclusively for Centurion® members.
Before joining the American Express Publishing Corp. in June 2000, Story was features editor of Vogue, where he was also responsible for the magazine's People Are Talking About section. Prior to Vogue, Story was senior editor of InStyle and assistant managing editor of New York magazine. He has also held editorial positions at Esquire, Travel + Leisure, USA Today and Reader's Digest.
Calvin Tsao has a broad range of design experience in international and domestic projects ranging from high fashion boutiques and hotels to urban design and large commercial and residential developments, including Suntec City, the 6 million square foot mixed-use complex in Singapore. In addition, he is known for his design and art direction of film, dance, and theatrical productions. Tsao is a founding partner of Tsao & McKown and is based primarily in the firm’s New York office. Tsao has served as the Eliot Noyes Visiting Design Critic in Architecture at Harvard University, and is currently teaching at Parsons School of Design.
Lynda S. Waggoner is Vice President of Western Pennsylvania Conservancy and Director of Fallingwater. She has been affiliated with the Frank Lloyd Wright masterwork since first serving as a tour guide during high school. She is the author of Fallingwater: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Romance with Nature. Waggoner was formerly curator of the Museum without Walls, an outreach program of the Baltimore Museum of Art, and curator of the Jay C. Leff Collection of non-Western art. In 1980, she became the first executive director of Touchstone Center for Crafts, now a nationally recognized crafts school.
Waggoner is past president of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, past Vice President of the Greater Pittsburgh Museum Council and past chairman of the Laurel Highlands Visitors Bureau. Currently, she is vice president of the Pennsylvania Federation of Museums and Preservation. In 2004 she was awarded the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal.