Lectures and Symposia
Historic Preservation
Frank Gehry’s proposed
Corcoran Gallery Addition
The Society sponsored an important and well-attended symposium, Architecture of the Whole: Additions to Historic Buildings and Neighborhoods, in October 2006.
Speakers included Professor Paul Spener Byard of Columbia, a highly influential exponent of preservation grounded in a modernist art-historical outlook, and Professor Steven W. Semes of Notre Dame, who advocates reinforcing the historic character of a given place through the design of architectural additions. Other speakers included Calder Loth of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources and Sharon Park, then in charge of administering the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings, the standard preservation template.
The symposium took place as part of the Traditional Building Exhibition and Conference presented by Restore Media at the Washington Hilton. First Lady Laura Bush wrote a gracious letter of welcome to symposium participants.
The Society also organized a tour of Washington sites illustrating the issues raised at the symposium.
Henry Hope Reed Capitol Luncheon and Lecture
Henry Hope Reed is the historian of architecture and decoration who, more than anyone, set the stage for the current resurgence of the classical tradition in the arts.
The Society is honored to count Reed among its founding members and to have sponsored a luncheon celebrating his culminating work, The United States Capitol: Its Architecture and Decoration, in the Capitol’s magnificent Lyndon Baines Johnson Room. This important event took place on December 1, 2004.
After receiving a brilliant introduction from Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Reed delivered a concise and captivating illustrated lecture about the Capitol.
The Henry Hope Reed Capitol Luncheon and Lecture event was made possible in part through the generous support of Messrs. Andy del Gallo and Kevin Roustazad of Eastern Memorials and Mr. Christopher Forbes.
Alexander Stoddart, Monumental Sculptor
witherspoon statue
princeton university
alexander stoddart, sc.
In April 2004, the Scottish Classical sculptor Alexander Stoddart spoke about the counter-cultural nature of his vocation in a postmodern age.
Stoddart, who collaborated with architect John Simpson in the sculptural decoration of the new Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, is also known for his civic monuments in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Atlanta, and Princeton, NJ. The American Arts Quarterly has hailed Stoddart as “clearly the most important British sculptor of his generation.”
Sponsored by the Society, the Stoddart lecture took place at the Arts Club of Washington.
John Simpson, Classical Architect
Fellows’ Dining Room
gonville and caius COllege
Cambridge University
John Simpson, Arch’t
The Society’s first event was an October 2002 lecture by the distinguished London-based classical architect, John Simpson, designer of the new Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, as well as extensive renovations at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and other noteworthy institutional projects. The lecture took place at the Cosmos Club in Washington.
A mannerist and eclectic in the tradition of his compatriots Soane and Nash, Simpson places great emphasis, like other architects in the Prince of Wales’s circle, on solid masonry construction. His Queen’s Gallery project was very favorably reviewed in the British press.