Gwendolyn Wright | |
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![]() Wright in 2014 | |
Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley, MArch and PhD New York University, BA |
Awards | Fellowship in the Humanities from the Ford Foundation, 1979-80 Nina Sutton Weeks Fellowship from the Stanford Humanities Center, 1982-83 ContentsGraham Foundation Fellowship, 2006 |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Architectural History Urban History Art History |
Institutions | Columbia University |
Gwendolyn Wright is an architectural historian and author. She was one of the hosts of the PBS television series History Detectives . She is a professor of architecture at Columbia University, also holding appointments in both its departments of history and art history. [1] Dr. Wright's specialties are US architectural history and urban history from after the Civil War to the present. She also writes about the exchange across national boundaries of architectural styles, influences, and techniques, particularly examining the colonial and neo-colonial attributes of both modernism and historic preservation. [2]
Gwendolyn Wright attended New York University, and in 1969 received a BA in history and art history. She did her graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, and was awarded her M.Arch in 1974 and her PhD in Architecture in 1978. She published her first book in 1980. [3]
Wright was hired by Columbia University in 1983, two years later becoming the first female to gain tenure in its prestigious Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. [2] She succeeded founder Robert A. M. Stern as director of the Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture, serving in that capacity from 1988 to 1992. [3] [4]
In 2002, Wright was hired by television producers to be part of what would ultimately become the new TV series "History Detectives". [3] Back then the working title for the show was “American Attic”, and the initial concept was to tell stories of history through a focus on houses, hence their interest in adding an experienced architectural historian like Wright. [5] The concept evolved into solving historical puzzles that use a wide variety of tangible objects to show how historians piece together various kinds of knowledge—and conflicting evidence and diverse perspectives—about what happened, how and why.
She has authored four books, edited two others, and written numerous articles, reviews, and essays. [3] [6]
Wright has been recognized for her achievements on numerous occasions, including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, 2004-5, a Fellowship in the Humanities from the Ford Foundation, 1979–80; a Nina Sutton Weeks Fellowship from the Stanford Humanities Center, 1982–83; a Fellowship from the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities, 1991; a Getty Fellowship from the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1992–93; a Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation Fellowship, 2005-6; and a Graham Foundation Fellowship, 2006. She was elected a fellow in the Society of American Historians in 1985, honoring literary quality in historical writing. [3]
Wright is married to the historian Anson Rabinbach. She has a daughter, Sophia Bender Koning, and a stepson, David Bender. [7]
Moralism and the Model Home: Domestic Architecture and Cultural Conflict in Chicago, 1873-1913. 1980 (1985 paperback) University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-90835-9
Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America. 1981 (1983 paperback). New York: Pantheon (MIT Press paperback). ISBN 978-0-394-50371-4 (9780262730648 paperback)
The History of History in American Schools of Architecture, 1865-1975. (edited with Janet Parks) 1990 (1996 paperback). New York: Princeton Architectural Press. ISBN 978-1-878271-02-0
The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism. 1991. University Of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-90848-9
The Formation of National Collections of Art and Archaeology. 1995. CASVA/National Gallery of Art. ISBN 978-0-300-07718-6
USA: Modern Architectures in History. 2008. Reaktion Press/University of Chicago. ISBN 978-1-86189-344-4
Frank Lloyd Wright Sr. was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements of the twentieth century, influencing architects worldwide through his works and mentoring hundreds of apprentices in his Taliesin Fellowship. Wright believed in designing in harmony with humanity and the environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was exemplified in Fallingwater (1935), which has been called "the best all-time work of American architecture".
Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was an American poet, author, and teacher. Her work often dealt with the personal celebrations and struggles of ordinary people in her community. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on May 1, 1950, for Annie Allen, making her the first African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize.
Mary Beth Norton is an American historian, specializing in American colonial history and well known for her work on women's history and the Salem witch trials. She is the Mary Donlon Alger Professor Emeritus of American History at the Department of History at Cornell University. Norton served as president of the American Historical Association in 2018. She is a recipient of the Ambassador Book Award in American Studies for In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. Norton received her Bachelor of Arts at the University of Michigan (1964). The next year she completed a Master of Arts, going on to receive her Ph.D. in 1969 at Harvard University. She identifies as a Democrat and she considers herself a Methodist. Mary Beth Norton is a pioneer of women historians not only in the United States but also in the whole world, as she was the first woman to get a job in the department of history at Cornell University.
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Olgivanna Lloyd Wright was the third and final wife of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. They first met in November 1924 and married in 1928. In 1932, the couple established Wright's architectural apprentice program and Taliesin Fellowship. In 1940, Olgivanna and Frank, along with their son-in-law William Wesley Peters, co-founded the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Following her husband's death in 1959, Olgivanna assumed the role of President of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, a position she held until a month prior to her death in 1985.
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Hillside Home School I, also known as the Hillside Home Building, was a Shingle Style building that architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed in 1887 for his aunts, Ellen and Jane Lloyd Jones for their Hillside Home School in the town of Wyoming, Wisconsin. The building functioned as a dormitory and library. Wright had the building demolished in 1950.
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