April 2015 Newsletter

Apr 23, 2015 by SAH News

 
April 2015 Volume LIX, No. 4 / Society of Architectural Historians Newsletter
 
SAH Announces 2015 Publication Award Recipients
Every year, the Society presents five awards honoring the most distinguished publications in architectural history, urban history, landscape history, preservation, and architectural exhibition catalogues that have been published in the previous two years. SAH announced the following winners of the 2015 Publication Awards at the 68th Annual International Conference Awards Ceremony on April 16 in Chicago, Ill.

Alice Davis Hitchcock Book Award: 
Richard Harris, Building a Market: The Rise of the Home Improvement Industry, 1914–1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012)

Christopher Curtis Mead, Making Modern Paris: Victor Baltard’s Central Markets and the Urban Practice (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012)

Antoinette Forrester Downing Book Award:
Ari Kelman, A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013)

Philip Johnson Exhibition Catalogue Award:
Patricia Bouchenot-Déchin and Georges Farhat, André Le Nôtre in Perspective (Paris: Éditions Hazan, 2013; distributed in U.S. by Yale University Press)

Honorable mention: Susan Weber, William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013)

Spiro Kostof Book Award:
Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, I Speak of the City: Mexico City at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012)

Honorable mention: Andrew Friedman, Covert Capital: Landscapes of Denial and the Making of U.S. Empire in the Suburbs of Northern Virginia (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2013)

Elisabeth Blair MacDougall Book Award:
David E. Coke and Alan Borg, Vauxhall Gardens: A History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011)

Founders’ JSAH Article Award:
George F. Flaherty, “Responsive Eyes: Urban Logistics and Kinetic Environments for the 1968 Mexico City Olympics,” Journal of Architectural Historians 73, no. 3 (September 2014): 372–397.


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SAH Announces 2015 SAH Award for Film and Video Recipient
SAH announced the winner of the 2015 SAH Award for Film and Video at the 68th Annual International Conference Awards Ceremony on April 18 in Chicago, Ill. The award was established in 2013 to recognize annually the most distinguished work of film or video on the history of the built environment.

Winner: The Best Planned City in the World: Olmsted, Vaux and the Buffalo Park System
Directors/Producers: Lawrence Hott and Diane Garey
Executive Producer: Robin Karson

Read More & Watch the Film
 
SAH Inducts the 2015 SAH Fellows
The Board of Directors names as Fellows of the Society of Architectural Historians individuals who have distinguished themselves by a lifetime of significant contributions to the field. These contributions may include scholarship, service to SAH, or stewardship of the built environment. SAH inducted the following individuals as SAH Fellows during the 68th Annual International Conference Awards Ceremony: David Brownlee, Keith Morgan, Pauline Saliga and Stanley Tigerman


Read the Citations
 

  Call for Papers: SAH 69th Annual International Conference
SAH is accepting abstracts for the SAH 69th Annual International Conference to be held in Pasadena/Los Angeles, CA, April 6-10, 2016. Please submit abstracts no later than June 9, 2015, for one of the 38 thematic sessions, Graduate Student Lightning Talks or for open sessions. The thematic sessions have been selected to cover topics across all time periods and architectural styles. SAH encourages submissions from architectural, landscape, and urban historians; museum curators; preservationists; independent scholars; architects; and members of SAH chapters and partner organizations.

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  Obituary: Seymour H. Persky
By SAH Executive Director Pauline Saliga
SAH lost a great friend and benefactor on Sunday, March 22, 2015, when Seymour H. Persky passed away. Persky, an attorney, preservationist, and philanthropist, changed SAH forever when in 1995 he offered to purchase the landmark James Charnley House for the Society if the organization would move its national headquarters to the house. When the SAH Board decided to accept Seymour’s offer, it was a cultural coup for the City of Chicago, and it ensured public access to Charnley House in perpetuity.


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    Remembering Michael Graves
By Stanley Tigerman FAIA, RAAR, FSAH
Whatever I achieved, Michael achieved more: more drawings, more paintings, more buildings, more industrial-designed objects—and they were all quite wondrous. How could you not love someone who designed Della Francesca-colored tea kettles with whistling bird’s spouts and overblown buildings with humongous swans and dolphins bidding you welcome? But he never made me feel uncomfortable when I inserted humor into my own work just as I never envied him when he made his architecture and design accessible through his sure hand and unwavering eye. By popularizing his work through his ideosyncratic use of symbolism and color, he lifted society’s collective spirits.


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    Obituary: Michio Yamaguchi (1943-2015)
By Pauline Saliga and Virginia Jansen
Michio Yamaguchi (born January 11, 1943), a frequent SAH Study Tour participant and beloved friend to many SAH members, passed away in San Francisco on March 8, 2015. He suffered from a number of health issues for the past few years. Born in Provo, Utah, Michio was raised primarily by his mother, Masu, after his father, Hideo, passed away in 1953. Michio is survived by his mother, his sister Grace Yamaguchi, and many cousins.

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    MoMA/UN Study Day Report
By Study Day Fellow Jennifer Tate
The Museum of Modern Art’s current exhibition, Latin America in Construction: 1955-1980, marks the first time since 1955 that the institution has presented architecture in Latin America. Participants in SAH’s MoMA/UN Study Day on March 27, 2015, were treated to a preview of the show by Dr. Barry Bergdoll, then-Chief Curator of Architecture and Design and currently a professor of architectural history at Columbia University. The goal of the show, he said, was to recalibrate the notion of “Latin America” as an architectural adjective toward a more nuanced understanding of both the parallels and differences in the built environment of all countries in the region.

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  Northern India: The Golden Triangle
SAH Blog post by Amber N. Wiley, 2013 Brooks Travelling Fellow
I knew ahead of time that Delhi would be crazy, but I was not prepared for the amount of crazy. Perhaps it is because I chose to stay in one of the most congested portions of an already congested city. Today Paharganj is known for its bazaar, as it was almost 400 years ago. It is described as “chaotic, noisy, and dirty,” on the Delhi Tourism website, and is commonly referred to as the “traveller’s ghetto.” It was exhilarating at the same time that it was exhausting.

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Argentina and Uruguay Field Seminar, September 1-12
There are still spots available on the 2015 SAH Field Seminar, "Architecture in the Rio de la Plata Basin: Between Tradition and Cosmopolitanism." This ten-day, nine-night trip will be led by architect and Buenos Aires native Natalia Muñoa with your host, SAH 2nd Vice President Sandy Isenstadt. Architects can earn 45 LU/HSW by participating in this program, which includes site visits to the College of Engineering (1936), Julio Vilamajó; Banco de la Nación (1944), Alejandro Bustillo; Curutchet House (1955), designed by Le Corbusier; the Jesuit Block and Estancias of Córdoba, a UNESCO World Heritage Site; and many more. Register at sah.org/2015-field-seminar.
 
SAH/CAA Survey about Guidelines for Evaluating Digital Scholarship
SAH and College Art Association are cooperating on a project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, to develop guidelines for evaluating scholarship in digital art and architectural history for advancement and tenure. The guidelines will cover projects that use digital technologies in research, production, publication, and/or exhibition. Obtaining the perspectives of SAH and CAA members on current practices for evaluating digital art and architectural history is vital to proposing such guidelines. Therefore, we would appreciate your taking the time to complete this survey. It should only require about five minutes of your time.
 
Thank You, Second-Quarter Donors
The Board of Directors and SAH staff thanks its many donors for their gifts to support our mission and educational programs during the period from January 1–March 31, 2015. View Donor List
 
New Content: Louisiana Classic Buildings
Fifty Classic Buildings, drawn from the 2003 Buildings of Louisiana volume by Karen Kingsley, have been added to SAH Archipedia. Surveying a range of types, styles, and periods across the state's varied parishes, cities, and towns—from Benjamin Henry Latrobe's last building in New Orleans to a modernist church in Lake Charles—these entries have been updated to reflect the past decade's changes, including the impact of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
 
Buildings of Texas Honored by San Antonio Conservation Society
The San Antonio Conservation Society honored Buildings of Texas: Central, South, and Gulf Coast with a 2015 Publication Award during an awards ceremony on March 20, 2015. The Society's Publication Awards recognize the authors of the best recently published book on Texas history. Read More
 
Current SAH Opportunities
SAH/Mellon Author Awards: These awards are designed to provide financial support to scholars publishing their first monograph on the history of the built environment and who are responsible for paying for rights and permissions for images. Deadline June 1, 2015.

SAH 69th Annual International Conference: SAH is accepting abstracts for its 2016 Annual International Conference, which takes place in Pasadena/Los Angeles, CA, April 6-10. Deadline June 9, 2015.

H. Allen Brooks Travelling Fellowship: This $50,000 fellowship will allow a recent graduate or emerging scholar to study by travel for one year. Deadline October 1, 2015.
 
SAH Chapter and Partner News
Proposals for papers or work-in-progress reports are solicited for the 2015 annual conference of the Marion Dean Ross/Pacific Northwest Chapter of the SAH. The meeting will be held in Ashland, Oregon, home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, on October 23rd to 25th. The theme is “Artifice and Authenticity in Architecture! To Play or Not To Play?” Topics germane to the theme will be given first priority; other proposals are also welcome. For more information, go to sahmdr.org/conference.html.

The Southeast Chapter of SAH is accepting paper abstracts for the SESAH 2015 annual conference in San Antonio, Texas (October 14-17). The conference seeks to provide a forum for exploration of the cultural diversity of the architecture of Texas and the Southeastern United States. The deadline to submit is May 1. View the call for papers here.

The Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) seeks paper proposals for the SHERA session, “Exploring Native Traditions in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Eurasia,” at the CAA 2016 Annual Conference, February 3–6, 2016 in Washington, D.C. Interested contributors should see the 2016 CAA Call for Participation and submit proposals along with other required documents to session chair Alison Hilton at hiltona@georgetown.edu by May 8, 2015.
 
Members in the News
Historic Gift to National WWII Museum Completes Bart Voorsanger's Design
Travis McDonald: Architectural Significance of Sweet Briar College
Ellen Weiss: USPS Black Heritage Stamp Ceremony
Article: Despina Stratigakos on Sibyl Moholy-Nagy - "Hitler's Revenge"
 
SAH April Booklist
Read the April Booklist of recently published architecture books and related works. Booklists and exhibition catalog lists are selected by Barbara Opar, architecture librarian, Syracuse University Library. New this month - Links to purchase have been added for each of the SAH Publication Award recipient booklists. Thank you, Barbara!