In conversation with Rick Brettell
When architect Philip Johnson died in 2005 at the age of 98, he was one of the most recognizable and influential figures on the American cultural landscape. The first recipient of the Pritzker Prize and MoMA’s founding architectural curator, Johnson made his mark as one of America’s leading architects with his famous Glass House in New Caanan, Connecticut. Johnson introduced European modernism to America through the sleek glass-and-steel structures that now dominate our cities; he also mentored and inspired generations of architects, designers, and artists. But Johnson was also a man of deep paradoxes: he was a Nazi sympathizer, a designer of synagogues, an enfant terrible into his old age, a populist, and a snob. The Man in the Glass House lifts the veil on Johnson’s controversial and endlessly contradictory life to tell the story of a charming yet deeply flawed man.
Mark Lamster is the architectural critic for the Dallas Morning News and a professor in the architecture school at the University of Texas at Arlington. He is also the author of two works of nonfiction, Spalding’s World Tour, about baseball, and Master of Shadows, about artist Peter Paul
Rubens. Art historian, critic, and professor Rick Brettell knew Johnson personally and will moderate the conversation.
"The Man in the Glass House is a vivid, thoughtful, illuminating, disturbing, and definitive chronicle of one of 20th-century architecture's most celebrated and powerful figures.”—Kurt Andersen, author and host of Studio 360
6:00 p.m. Take a stroll from the DMA to explore Thanks-Giving Square, one of the many iconic buildings Philip Johnson designed in Dallas, led by an expert on the artchitecture of downtown. Tour tickets are priced separately from the event and are $10. Pre-registration is required. Wear comfortable shoes!
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