Anthony Alofsin
Encyclopedia
Anthony Alofsin is an architect, artist, art historian, writer, and professor. Educated at Andover
, Harvard
, and Columbia University
, he has been named a Fellow, Bogliasco Foundation, Liguria Study Center for the Arts and Humanities; Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellow, Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art
, Washington, D.C; Fellow, MacDowell Colony
; Fellow, the Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften, Vienna
; Visiting Scholar, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation; Visiting Fellow, Harvard Graduate School of Design
; and Fulbright Professor, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
.
His recent book When Buildings Speak: Architecture as Language in the Habsburg Empire and its Aftermath, 1867-1933 won the Vasari Award from the Dallas Museum of Art
; a German language edition will be published by the Verlag Anton Pustet in 2011. He is editor of A Modernist Museum in Perspective: The East Building, National Gallery of Art. He is the author of The Struggle for Modernism: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and City Planning at Harvard, the history of the Harvard Graduate School of Design from its beginnings through the 1960s. His book reviews and essays have appeared in The Times Literary Supplement
, The Burlington Magazine
, and The New Criterion
. His first work of fiction, Halflife was published in January, 2009.
Much of his scholarly writing has focused on issues of influence, how ideas are transmitted and transformed, in the concept of artistic transition as well as reception as an index of cultural and social meaning. He conducts a broad range of research activities including American modernism
, Central European modern architecture, the history of ornament
, the history of design education in architecture, landscape architecture
, and city planning
as well as ongoing research on Frank Lloyd Wright
. He has written on the role of narrative
in architecture and on the origins of regionalism
in modern architecture.
In recent years he has turned his attention to fiction and narrative drawings based on ritual practices as well as designs for private clients. He is currently writing a memoir, Memphis Stories, preparing a folio of drawings, Places of Refuge, planning a book on the American home, which explores the practices of the high end housing industry, and continuing research for a new introduction to the work and life of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Alofsin is internationally recognized as one of the world's leading authorities on the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and as an expert on modern architecture. In 2006, he received the Wright Spirit Award from the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. The award honors an individual who, through artistic, architectural, scholarly, professional or other endeavors embodies the spirit of Frank Lloyd Wright. He is editor of Prairie Skyscraper: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Price Tower and Frank Lloyd Wright: Europe and Beyond, and he has written a new introduction to Frank Lloyd Wright's famous Wasmuth folios, Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe, which appeared in English, German, and Italian editions. His published works include the introduction to Frank Lloyd Wright's Fifty Views of Japan: the 1905 Photograph Album. His pioneering study, Frank Lloyd Wright: the Lost Years, 1910-1922, is acknowledged to be one of the most important books on Wright in the last forty years; the book was a winner in the monograph category in the American Institute of Architects International Book Awards. Alofsin’s other publications include the five-volume reference work, Frank Lloyd Wright: An Index to the Taliesin Correspondence, which won the Vasari Award of the Dallas Museum of Art; it has become an invaluable reference tool for Wright scholars and researchers the world over.
He has also been active as a curator and adviser to several architectural exhibitions. He was consulting curator for the major retrospective Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect at the Museum of Modern Art
in New York. He curated Prairie Skyscraper on Wright’s Price Tower
in Bartlesville, Oklahoma
, and the exhibition Wright's Wasmuth Folios: Representing the Ideal, at the Ross Gallery, Columbia University.
Alofsin maintains an architectural practice and his projects, which range in scale and style, have been frequently published. The sites of his projects include New Mexico
, New York
, and Texas
. He also lectures internationally and is the Roland Roessner Centennial Professor of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin
where he founded and directed the Ph.D. program in architectural history
.
Excerpt from a review of his book, When Buildings Speak: Architecture as Language in the Habsburg Empire and its Aftermath, 1867-1933: “…this book marks an undisputable contribution not only to the knowledge of the Central European architecture, but also to the ongoing remapping of modern architecture. Alofsin introduces a new reading of the architecture of the region and supports it with an extremely rich use of illustrations, including many large color photographs of breathtaking quality….Alofsin demonstrates here that modern architecture implies several and different means of expression, all of which are equally worth investigating. While certainly contributing to the continuing shifts of historiography of modern architecture, this book will also open pathways to the study of even more ‘adventurous’ territories that have yet to be considered by mainstream architectural history.”
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, June 2008.
in the History of Art Series). Editor and essayist. New Haven: Yale University Press and National Gallery of Art, 2009.
Phillips Academy
Phillips Academy is a selective, co-educational independent boarding high school for boarding and day students in grades 9–12, along with a post-graduate year...
, Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, and Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, he has been named a Fellow, Bogliasco Foundation, Liguria Study Center for the Arts and Humanities; Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellow, Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC...
, Washington, D.C; Fellow, MacDowell Colony
MacDowell Colony
The MacDowell Colony is an art colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, U.S.A., founded in 1907 by Marian MacDowell, pianist and wife of composer Edward MacDowell. She established the institution and its endowment chiefly with donated funds...
; Fellow, the Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften, Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
; Visiting Scholar, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation; Visiting Fellow, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Harvard Graduate School of Design
The Harvard Graduate School of Design is a graduate school at Harvard University offering degrees in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning and Design.-History:...
; and Fulbright Professor, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna is an institution of higher education in Vienna, Austria.- History :The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna was founded in 1692 as a private academy by the court-painter Peter Strudl, who became the Praefectus Academiae Nostrae. In 1701 he was ennobled as Baron of the Empire...
.
His recent book When Buildings Speak: Architecture as Language in the Habsburg Empire and its Aftermath, 1867-1933 won the Vasari Award from the Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas Museum of Art
The Dallas Museum of Art is a major art museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, USA, along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood. In 1984, the museum moved from its previous location in Fair Park to the Arts District, Dallas, Texas...
; a German language edition will be published by the Verlag Anton Pustet in 2011. He is editor of A Modernist Museum in Perspective: The East Building, National Gallery of Art. He is the author of The Struggle for Modernism: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and City Planning at Harvard, the history of the Harvard Graduate School of Design from its beginnings through the 1960s. His book reviews and essays have appeared in The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation.-History:...
, The Burlington Magazine
The Burlington Magazine
The Burlington Magazine is a monthly academic journal that covers the fine and decorative arts. It is the longest running art journal in the English language and it is a charitable organisation since 1986. It was established in 1903 by a group of art historians and connoisseurs which included Roger...
, and The New Criterion
The New Criterion
The New Criterion is a New York-based monthly literary magazine and journal of artistic and cultural criticism, edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball. It has sections for criticism of poetry, theater, art, music, the media, and books...
. His first work of fiction, Halflife was published in January, 2009.
Much of his scholarly writing has focused on issues of influence, how ideas are transmitted and transformed, in the concept of artistic transition as well as reception as an index of cultural and social meaning. He conducts a broad range of research activities including American modernism
American modernism
American modernism like modernism in general is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation, and is thus in its essence both progressive and optimistic...
, Central European modern architecture, the history of ornament
Ornament (architecture)
In architecture and decorative art, ornament is a decoration used to embellish parts of a building or object. Large figurative elements such as monumental sculpture and their equivalents in decorative art are excluded from the term; most ornament does not include human figures, and if present they...
, the history of design education in architecture, landscape architecture
Landscape architecture
Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor and public spaces to achieve environmental, socio-behavioral, or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic investigation of existing social, ecological, and geological conditions and processes in the landscape, and the design of interventions...
, and city planning
Urban planning
Urban planning incorporates areas such as economics, design, ecology, sociology, geography, law, political science, and statistics to guide and ensure the orderly development of settlements and communities....
as well as ongoing research on Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...
. He has written on the role of narrative
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
in architecture and on the origins of regionalism
Critical regionalism
Critical Regionalism is an approach to architecture that strives to counter placelessness and lack of identity in Modern Architecture by utilizing the building's geographical context...
in modern architecture.
In recent years he has turned his attention to fiction and narrative drawings based on ritual practices as well as designs for private clients. He is currently writing a memoir, Memphis Stories, preparing a folio of drawings, Places of Refuge, planning a book on the American home, which explores the practices of the high end housing industry, and continuing research for a new introduction to the work and life of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Alofsin is internationally recognized as one of the world's leading authorities on the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and as an expert on modern architecture. In 2006, he received the Wright Spirit Award from the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. The award honors an individual who, through artistic, architectural, scholarly, professional or other endeavors embodies the spirit of Frank Lloyd Wright. He is editor of Prairie Skyscraper: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Price Tower and Frank Lloyd Wright: Europe and Beyond, and he has written a new introduction to Frank Lloyd Wright's famous Wasmuth folios, Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe, which appeared in English, German, and Italian editions. His published works include the introduction to Frank Lloyd Wright's Fifty Views of Japan: the 1905 Photograph Album. His pioneering study, Frank Lloyd Wright: the Lost Years, 1910-1922, is acknowledged to be one of the most important books on Wright in the last forty years; the book was a winner in the monograph category in the American Institute of Architects International Book Awards. Alofsin’s other publications include the five-volume reference work, Frank Lloyd Wright: An Index to the Taliesin Correspondence, which won the Vasari Award of the Dallas Museum of Art; it has become an invaluable reference tool for Wright scholars and researchers the world over.
He has also been active as a curator and adviser to several architectural exhibitions. He was consulting curator for the major retrospective Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
in New York. He curated Prairie Skyscraper on Wright’s Price Tower
Price Tower
The Price Tower is a nineteen story, 221 foot high tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma that was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It is the only realized skyscraper by Wright, and is one of only two vertically-oriented Wright structures extant .The Price Tower was commissioned by Harold C. Price of the...
in Bartlesville, Oklahoma
Bartlesville, Oklahoma
Bartlesville is a city in Osage and Washington counties in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The population was 43,070 at the 2010 census. Bartlesville is located forty-seven miles north of Tulsa and very close to Oklahoma's northern border with Kansas. It is the county seat of Washington County, in...
, and the exhibition Wright's Wasmuth Folios: Representing the Ideal, at the Ross Gallery, Columbia University.
Alofsin maintains an architectural practice and his projects, which range in scale and style, have been frequently published. The sites of his projects include New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, and Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
. He also lectures internationally and is the Roland Roessner Centennial Professor of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
where he founded and directed the Ph.D. program in architectural history
Architectural History
Architectural History is the main journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain .The journal is published each autumn. The architecture of the British Isles is a major theme of the journal, although it includes more general papers on the history of architecture. Member of...
.
Excerpt from a review of his book, When Buildings Speak: Architecture as Language in the Habsburg Empire and its Aftermath, 1867-1933: “…this book marks an undisputable contribution not only to the knowledge of the Central European architecture, but also to the ongoing remapping of modern architecture. Alofsin introduces a new reading of the architecture of the region and supports it with an extremely rich use of illustrations, including many large color photographs of breathtaking quality….Alofsin demonstrates here that modern architecture implies several and different means of expression, all of which are equally worth investigating. While certainly contributing to the continuing shifts of historiography of modern architecture, this book will also open pathways to the study of even more ‘adventurous’ territories that have yet to be considered by mainstream architectural history.”
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, June 2008.
Books
- Alofsin, Anthony Architektur beim Wort nehmen. Bildhaft sprechende Baukunst des Habsburgerreiches und seiner Nachfolgestaaten 1867-1933, Salzburg: Verlag Anton Pustet (in press, 2011).
- Alofsin, Anthony Halflife, A Fictive Memoir. Austin, TX: InnerformsLtd.com, 2009.
- Alofsin, Anthony, editor and essayist, A Modernist Museum in Perspective: The East Building, National Gallery of Art (Studies
in the History of Art Series). Editor and essayist. New Haven: Yale University Press and National Gallery of Art, 2009.
- Alofsin, Anthony, When Buildings Speak: Architecture As Language in the Habsburg Empire and Its Aftermath, 1867-1933, University of Chicago PressUniversity of Chicago PressThe University of Chicago Press is the largest university press in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including The Chicago Manual of Style, dozens of academic journals, including Critical Inquiry, and a wide array of...
, Chicago and London 2006, ISBN 0226015068
- Alofsin, Anthony, editor/co-author Prairie skyscraper: Frank Lloyd Wright's Price Tower, Price Tower Arts Center, Bartlesville OK; Rizzoli, New York 2005, ISBN 0847827542
- Alofsin, Anthony, The Struggle for Modernism: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and City Planning at Harvard, W. W. Norton, New York and London 2002, ISBN 0393730484
- Alofsin, Anthony, editor, Frank Lloyd Wright: An Index to the Taliesin Correspondence, Garland Publishing, New York 1988 [five volumes]
- Alofsin, Anthony, editor, Frank Lloyd Wright: Europe and Beyond, University of California PressUniversity of California PressUniversity of California Press, also known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish books and papers for the faculty of the University of California, established 25 years earlier in 1868...
, Berkeley CA 1999, ISBN 0520211162
- Alofsin, Anthony, Frank Lloyd Wright--The Lost Years, 1910-1922: A Study of Influence, University of Chicago PressUniversity of Chicago PressThe University of Chicago Press is the largest university press in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including The Chicago Manual of Style, dozens of academic journals, including Critical Inquiry, and a wide array of...
, Chicago 1993, ISBN 0226013669