Conversations in Context 2011-2012

Thursday evening Glass House guest-hosted tour + reception

CONVERSATIONS IN CONTEXT

Since the 1940s the Philip Johnson Glass House has served as a site for inspiration, education and conversation across creative disciplines. Its 47-acre landscape, 14 architectural structures and world-class art collection have drawn members of an international creative community to participate in its rich story. This year, the Glass House introduces a new opportunity to support the site's legacy of inspiration by engaging top influencers across the fields of art, architecture, design, landscape and preservation to explore a narrative of new ideas, on-site with the public.

Join a leading mind in architecture, art, landscape, history, design, or preservation and experience the Glass House campus through an entirely new lens. Listen to a personal narrative, interpretation, or inspiration by a special guest while walking the site with an intimate group of visitors. Continue the dialogue during a reception at the Glass House following the tour. Conversations in Context take place Thursday evenings from 5:30-8:00pm.

2012 Schedule of hosts will be announced in early March. Sign up for the Glass House mailing list to receive first notice.

Conversations in Context visitors will also receive a Glass House / NTHP membership and a 10% discount in the Glass House Store. $100 of this ticket purchase is tax-deductible and supports ongoing preservation and education efforts at the Glass House.

2011 CONVERSATIONS IN CONTEXT HOSTS: Hilary Lewis, Philip Johnson Scholar; Donald Kaufman + Taffy Dahl, Donald Kaufman Color; Theodore H.M. Prudon, DOCOMOMO US + Shashi Caan, International Federation of Interior Architects/Designers; Todd Eberle, Photographer; Paul Goldberger, New Yorker Architecture Critic; Tod Williams + Billie Tsien, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects; Gregg Pasquarelli, SHoP Architects + Philip Nobel, Architecture Critic; David Salle, Artist; Charles Renfro, Partner, Diller Scofidio + Renfro; Barry Bergdoll, Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, Museum of Modern Art.

May 19, 2011: Hilary Lewis, Philip Johnson Scholar

Hilary Lewis collaborated with Philip Johnson over twelve years, recording extensively Johnson's memoirs and ideas on architecture. Lewis wrote two books with Johnson: Philip Johnson: The Architect in His Own Words (Rizzoli, 1994), an oral history of Johnson's experience in architecture, and The Architecture of Philip Johnson (Bulfinch, 2002), a presentation of the full Johnson portfolio from the early houses of the 1940s through his extended career of the following six decades, as well as curated a major museum exhibition on the architect, Philip Johnson: Architecture as Art. Lewis is trained in the history of architecture, public policy and urban planning, has taught architectural and urban history at Harvard and MIT, and served as the Philip Johnson Scholar at the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Glass House site.

Continue the Conversation: Hilary Lewis moderates online How can we scale down our homes and our image of luxurious living?

June 16, 2011: Donald Kaufman + Taffy Dahl, Colorists

Pioneers in the field of architectural color, colorists and artists Donald Kaufman and Taffy Dahl create unique palettes and special pigment formulations based on more than thirty years of research on the equation of color + space + light. Since 1976, Donald Kaufman Color has collaborated with the best and best-known talents in architecture and design to mix site-specific palettes, including for Philip Johnson’s Glass House and New York City apartment. Kaufman’s paintings can be found in the Whitney Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Hirshhorn; Johnson described him as “the rare painter who understands architecture.” The team is devoted to realizing the energy of architecture --“architectural color is nothing less than the medium through which we experience architecture…it can enhance or deplete the harmony and balance of the spaces”--, to illuminating the visions of architects and designers, and to ensuring that clients may recreate the luminosity and expansiveness experienced outdoors.

Continue the Conversation: Don Kaufman moderates online How does color affect your life?

July 21, 2011: Theodore H.M. Prudon, DOCOMOMO US + Shashi Caan, International Federation of Interior Architects/Designers

Dr. Theodore H.M. Prudon FAIA is an architect, scholar, educator and author specializing in the preservation of the architecture of the modern movement. As the founding president of Docomomo US (Documentation and Conservation of Buildings, Sites, and Neighborhoods of the Modern Movement), Prudon leads the national chapter and serves on the international board of the global organization dedicated to preserving Modern architecture. Prudon is a Dutch-born architect and current principal of Prudon & Partners, an architectural design firm specializing in restoration. He is a professor of historic preservation at Columbia University and Pratt Institute, and recently published his seminal work entitled Preservation of Modern Architecture (Wiley, 2008), a professional reference for professionals in the built environment, exploring the philosophical and practical issues inherent to the preservation of Modernism. In 2012, the book will be published in both a Chinese and a Japanese translation. Shashi Caan advocates for an expanded role of design in society by bridging the divide between design practice, theory, and education. Ms. Caan is interested in optimizing human potential through design; she currently serves as President of the International Federation of Interior Architects/Designers and is both Founder and Principal of The Collective, a firm focused on integrating social and environmental stewardship and creative design solutions across a diversity of built environments. An active author, educator and practitioner, she was born in India and holds a BFA from Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland, as well as Masters degrees in Industrial Design and in Architecture from Pratt Institute, New York. She was formerly both Executive Chair of the International Design Alliance, and Chair of the Interior Design Program at Parsons the New School for Design.

Continue the Conversation: Kazys Varnelis, Director of the Network Architecture Lab and participant in the evening moderates online How do you pinpoint a singular moment or experience to preserve?

August 18, 2011: Todd Eberle, Photographer

Todd Eberle was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1963 and came to prominence with his iconic photographs of Donald Judd’s works produced at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. Early in his career, he also photographed prominent artists and architects including Philip Johnson, Brice Marden, and Zaha Hadid. He is currently the photographer-at-large for Vanity Fair magazine. In addition to editorial photography, Eberle has exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles). Eberle's book, Empire of Space, published in 2011, chronicles his thirty-year career and features many never-before-seen photos. (Photo courtesy of Todd Eberle).

September 8, 2011: Paul Goldberger, New Yorker Architecture Critic

Paul Goldberger is the Architecture Critic for The New Yorker, where since 1997 he has written the magazine’s celebrated “Sky Line” column. He was previously the architecture critic for The New York Times, where his work was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism. He also holds the Joseph Urban Chair in Design and Architecture at The New School in New York City and was formerly Dean of Parsons, The New School for Design. He is the author of several books, including, most recently, Why Architecture Matters (Yale University Press, 2009), Building Up and Tearing Down: Reflections on the Age of Architecture (Monacelli Press, 2009), and Christo and Jeanne-Claude (Taschen, 2010). He has written often on the work of Philip Johnson, and he appears frequently on film and television to discuss art, architecture, and cities. He has also served as a special consultant and adviser on architecture and planning matters to several major cultural and educational institutions, including the Morgan Library in New York, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, the New York Public Library and Cornell and Harvard universities.

September 15, 2011: Tod Williams + Billie Tsien, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects

Tod Williams received his Bachelor of Arts in 1965 and Master of Fine Arts and Architecture in 1967, both from Princeton. Billie Tsien received her undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from Yale in 1971 and her Master in Architecture from UCLA in 1977. Tod Williams and Billie Tsien have worked together for over 30 years and in1986 they founded Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. Their concise and compelling body of work includes The American Folk Art Museum in New York, the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California, the Cranbrook Natatorium in Michigan, an addition to the Phoenix Art Museum, Skirkanich Hall at the University of Pennsylvania, and the C.V. Starr East Asian Library at the University of California at Berkeley. Work in construction includes a new museum for the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, a performing and visual arts center at the University of Chicago, a multi-disciplinary dialogue center at Bennington College, the Asia Society headquarters in Hong Kong, an information technology campus in Mumbai, and two new skating rinks in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. The firm is also designing a dormitory at Haverford College and a nano-technology laboratory at Princeton University.

Their buildings have been repeatedly honored by the American Institute of Architects and have received numerous awards. In 2002 the American Folk Art Museum, the first new museum built in New York in over three decades, won the Arup World Architecture Award for the Best Building in the World. They have also been the recipients of the Brunner Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Medal of Honor from the New York City AIA, the President’s Medal from the Architectural League of New York and the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture. Both architects maintain active teaching careers parallel to their practice and have taught extensively throughout the United States. Most recently, they held the Bishop Visiting Professorship of Architectural Design at Yale University. They are also interested in work that bridges the realms of art and architecture. Billie serves on the advisory council for the Wexner Prize, and is a Director of the Public Art Fund and of the Architectural League of New York. The work of Tod Williams and Billie Tsien pays careful attention to context, detail and the subtleties of materials. Their projects have been published extensively both in the United States and overseas. A monograph entitled Work/Life was released in the fall of 2000 by Monacelli Press.

September 22, 2011: Gregg Pasquarelli, SHoP Architects + Philip Nobel, Architecture Critic

Gregg Pasquarelli is a Founding Principal of SHoP Architects, a firm that has gained recognition for creating a new model of architecture centered on the belief that “great architecture demands that design, finance, and technology work together,” and SHoP Construction, “transforming intricate design into easily understood construction models by rethinking the overlap between design and construction.” Pasquarelli has lectured, exhibited, and been published internationally, and serves on the board of the Architectural League of New York. He was trained in business and architecture, and has taught at Yale University, Columbia GSAPP and the University of Virginia. SHoP's current work includes the Barclays Center at Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, a two-mile esplanade and park along the East River Waterfront, the Innovation Hub Government Complex in Botswana, Africa, the South Street Seaport Redevelopment in New York, and projects for Google in Mountain View, CA.

Philip Nobel is a practicing architect and architecture and design critic who has written for Artforum, Vogue, The New York Times, Metropolis, The Nation and other publications. Sixteen Acres, (Metropolitan/Holt, 2005) is his most recent book on the politics of the World Trade Center reconstruction. He practices architecture with the firm of Nobel & de Monchaux.

October 13, 2011: David Salle, Artist

One of the most important painters to emerge at the end of the 1970s, David Salle helped define the postmodern sensibility by combining figuration with an extremely varied pictorial language. The Glass House permanent collection contains four of Salle's works: Black Watch (1983), Common Reader (1981), Drum (1980) and Miner (1985). His work has been exhibited in more than 100 museums and galleries worldwide, including the Whitney Biennial, Documenta, the Venice Biennale, Carnegie International, the Paris Biennale, and most recently, The Pictures Generation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As a painter whose work comes out of a tradition of installation and performance, Salle is a longtime collaborator with Karole Armitage, designing sets and costumes for more than twenty of her ballets and operas. Their collaborations have been staged at such venues as the Metropolitan Opera, the Joyce Theater, Paris Opera, Opera Comique, Opera Deutsche, Oper Berlin, and La Fenice.

Salle is represented in the collections of most modern art institutions, and solo exhibitions of his work have taken place at the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles; Castello di Rivioli; the Tel Aviv Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Guggenheim Bilbao; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover; and the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien.

Salle has contributed his writings on art to such publications as Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, and Modern Painters, as well as to numerous exhibition catalogues and anthologies. He received a Guggenheim fellowship for theater design in 1986 and in 1995 directed the feature film Search & Destroy starring Griffin Dunne and Christopher Walken.

October 20, 2011: Charles Renfro, DILLER SCOFIDIO + RENFRO

Charles Renfro was born in Baytown Texas in 1964. He is a practicing architect and has been based in New York City since 1989. He joined Diller + Scofidio in 1997 and was promoted to partner at Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) in 2004. DS+R is an interdisciplinary studio that fuses architecture, the visual arts and the performing arts while investigating issues of contemporary culture such as the spatial conventions of the everyday, the influence of media technologies on architecture, the changing definitions of domesticity, and the institution in the public realm. As a collaborator with Diller+Scofidio, he served as Project Leader on Brasserie, Eyebeam, the BAM Cultural District master plan (with Rem Koolhaas/OMA), Blur, the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, and the redesign and expansion of the Juilliard School and Tully Hall at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts among other projects. DS+R was awarded the National Design Award in Architecture from the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in 2006. Renfro’s work with DS+R has been exhibited worldwide at many museums and institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum, the Netherlands Architecture Institute, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and the Centre Pompidou. Prior to joining DS+R, Renfro was an associate at Smith-Miller + Hawkinson Architects and Ralph Appelbaum Associates, both based in New York. He was a founding partner of Department of Design in Brooklyn. His independent art and architectural work has been exhibited in several galleries nationwide including the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York. His writing has been published in Bomb and A+U magazines. He lectures frequently both in the United States and abroad and has participated in symposia at the University of Virginia, Cornell, and Harvard GSD among others. Renfro is a graduate of Rice University and holds a Master’s degree from Columbia University’s GSAPP. He has been on the faculty of Columbia since 2000 and was the Cullinan Visiting Professor at Rice University in 2006.

November 17, 2011: Barry Bergdoll, Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, Museum of Modern Art

Barry Bergdoll is The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art and professor of modern architectural history at Columbia University. Holding a B.A. from Columbia, an M.A. from King’s College, Cambridge, and a Ph.D. from Columbia, his broad interests center on modern architectural history with a particular emphasis on France and Germany since 1800.

Bergdoll has organized, curated, and consulted on many landmark exhibitions of 19th and 20th-century architecture including “Building Collections: Recent Acquisitions of Architecture” opening at MoMA in November 2010; “Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront” at MoMA (through October 11, 2010); “Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity” at MoMA (2009-10); “Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling” at MoMA (2008); “Lost Vanguard: Soviet Modernist Architecture, 1922-32” at MoMA (2007); "Mies in Berlin" at MoMA (2001), with Terence Riley; "Breuer in Minnesota" at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (2002); "Les Vaudoyer: Une Dynastie d'Architectes at the Musée D'Orsay, Paris (1991); and "Ste. Geneviève/Pantheon; Symbol of Revolutions," in Paris and at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal (1989).

He is author or editor of numerous publications including, Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity (winner of the 2010 Award for Outstanding Exhibition Catalogue, Association of Art Museum Curators); Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling (winner of the 2010 Philip Johnson Book Award, Society of Architectural Historians); Mies in Berlin (winner of the 2002 Philip Johnson Book Award, Society of Architectural Historians and AICA Best Exhibition Award, 2002); Karl Friedrich Schinkel: An Architecture for Prussia (winner of the 1995 AIA Book Award); Lẻon Vaudoyer: Historicism in the Age of Industry; and European Architecture 1750-1890, in the Oxford History of Art series. An edited volume, Fragments: Architecture and the Unfinished, was published by Thames and Hudson in 2006. He served as President of the Society of Architectural Historians from 2006 to 2008.

Conversations in Context 2011 was generously sponsored by BMW and Design Within Reach.

As a premier architectural landmark in the United States, BMW is proud to support the preservation of the Philip Johnson Glass House.

Design Within Reach is the world’s largest source for the best in modern design, providing access to mid-century design icons and is happy to support the Philip Johnson Glass House