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Women in Modernism Colloquium at
The Museum of Modern Art
October 25, 2007
For Immediate Release
"Women are the real architects of society." —Harriet Beecher Stowe
Exploring the Fate of Women's Architectural Legacies in Modernism A Colloquium at the Museum of Modern Art
New York, NY, October 4, 2007—The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, in conjunction with The Museum of Modern Art, will present Women in Modernism — Making Places in Architecture, a colloquium held in the Celeste Bartos Theater at MoMA on October 25 from 6:30 - 8:30 p.m.
The main speaker, Gwendolyn Wright, Professor of Architecture at Columbia University and a host on the PBS TV show, History Detectives, intends “to look closely at networks of power in the profession, and specifically to ask how women have fared in this system. It’s the start of a conversation that aims to clarify processes of decision-making, to challenge entrenched or archaic inequalities, to explore alternative possibilities.”
The purpose of the Women in Modernism colloquium is to explore the roles that architectural arbiters—of both past and present—have had and continue to have in shaping the history, and defining the legacy, of modern architecture in the United States—a process that often overlooked until very recently the contributions of women. Curators, architects, historians and critics will address the process of selection and the values they employ each time they design a course or exhibition, or publish a book or article. Barry Bergdoll, the Museum’s Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, will moderate the panel conversation.
Participants include Sarah Herda, Director, The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Chicago; Toshiko Mori, architect and Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture and Chair of the Department of Architecture, Harvard University; Karen Stein, former Editorial Director, Phaidon Press; and with a welcome by Beverly Willis, FAIA. The event will take place at The Celeste Bartos Theater, The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building, The Museum of Modern Art, located at 4 West 54th Street. Tickets ($10; members $8; students, $5; seniors, and staff of other museums) can be purchased at the lobby information desk, the Film desk, or online at www.moma.org/thinkmodern.
The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, which was founded in 2002 by distinguished architect Beverly Willis, a Fellow of the American Institute of Architecture and a Founding Trustee of the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., works to advance the scholarly study and public recognition of the contributions made by women to the architecture professions in the United States during the middle years of the twentieth century.
The Foundation boasts a robust grants program for individuals and institutions geared to professional and public audiences alike. BWAF funds research that focuses on the contributions women have made and continue to make in the production of architecture, whether as practitioners of design and urbanism or as historians and critics. By retrieving and re-evaluating women’s work and stories lost in the dustbins of history, BWAF believes that women’s roles can be more fairly evaluated and women’s accomplishments more readily recognized. BWAF is the only Foundation in the U.S. with this mission.
The program is partially funded with a grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
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