Ciclo de conferências: Nineteenth Century Revisited

03.03.2021 | 03:30 PM GMT

Barry Bergdoll

Revisiting the European Nineteenth century after Brexit: Thoughts on European Architecture 1750-1890 at 21

“To open a series in 2021 on the Nineteenth Century I propose to reflect on the daunting task two decades ago of writing one of the two volumes devoted to architecture of that period in the Oxford University Press History of Art series, a series aimed to introduce students and a more general public to major periods and themes of the history of art and architecture (the other was on the Architecture of the United States). Published as the Twentieth Century came to a close, that volume is now twenty-one years old, a maturing moment, perhaps, to reflect on its aims, shortcomings, and on the state of study of 19th century architecture as it slips further and further into the rear view mirror, even as certain aspects of 19th century culture seem, as the factory warning sometimes announces “closer than that may appear,” if only to judge by the rise of parochial nationalism making the concept of “Europe” seem more fragile than it has in generations. How does that project, commissioned in the mid-1990s, appear in 2021 with new framings of global art history, critical race theory, and a new generation of post-colonial thought, in addition to such themes as the institutional turn in art history and the infrastructural turn in architectural history? How might it look if written today?”

Barry Bergoll

Barry Bergdoll is Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History at Columbia University and the former Chief Curator of the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2007-14). A specialist in the history of modern architecture, he curated numerous exhibitions at MoMA, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Musée d’Orsay, the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, and other venues, including Mies In Berlin (2001), Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity (2009-2010), Rising Currents : Projects for New York’s Waterfront (2010),Henri Labrouste: Structure Brought to Light (2013), Latin America in Construction : Architecture 1955-1980 (2015) and Frank Lloyd Wright at 150 : Unpacking the Archive (2017), as well as the current display “Ornament and Abstraction,” his last at MoMA (2020), as well as Le Panthéon: Symbole des Révolutions (1989) in Paris and Montréal for the bicentennial of the French Revolution. In addition to European Architecture 1750-1890, his books include Léon Vaudoyer: Historicism in the Age of Industry (1994), Karl Friedrich Schinkel: An Architecture for Prussia (1994), and most recently (with Jonathan Massey) Marcel Breuer: Building Global Institutions (2017). He is currently working on Out of Site/In Plain View: A History of Exhibiting Architecture, based on the Mellon Lectures delivered at the National Gallery of Art, Washington (2013). A former President of the Society of Architectural Historians, Bergdoll an honorary fellow of the RIBA and of the New York AIA, where he serves currently as President of the Board of the Center for Architecture, New York.