CENTERS
The Synergy of Centers Centers at the Weitzman School deepen its impact-driven mission and keep it responsive to evolving social needs. In this campaign alone, new academic centers have launched—and quickly achieved success—in public art, the preservation of civil rights, urbanism and ecology, and energy policy.
The Architectural Archives The Architectural Archives plays a pivotal role in the education of Weitzman students, offering unique opportunities to interact with drawings, models, and other archival materials that energize and elevate conversations about the creative process. Archives exhibitions, publications, and programs also serve alumni and a widening international public. Some pivotal gifts and exhibitions made possible by the campaign are highlighted below: — Over the course of the campaign, important acquisitions of materials related to the work of Louis Kahn came from Urs Buttiker, Nathaniel Kahn, and Sue Ann Kahn. Significant additions to existing Archives collections include gifts from Paola Frascari for the Marco Frascari Collection, and Carol McHarg for the Ian Lennox McHarg Collection. Clare Yellin made a major donation of presentation drawings and photographs related to metalworker Samuel Yellin. Feodore Pitcairn contributed two pastel renderings by Richard Neutra, and William Peck donated a pair of wrought iron gateways that were designed by Frank Furness for his brother Horace Howard Furness. — New collections were established related to the following architects and firms: Steven Goldberg, Herman Hassinger, KieranTimberlake, Walter Livingston, John Nicolais, Laurie Olin, Anant Raje, Louis Sauer, Frank Schlessinger, and Marianna Thomas. Two drawings by Gertrude Olmsted, one of the first women to enroll in design studios at Penn (1925–26), were given by William and Sally Rhoads. — The Philadelphia Museum of Art donated one of the neon griffins designed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown from the Museum’s West Foyer, along with selected furnishings from their Members Lounge. David and Louise Trubeck also contributed materials related to their house on Nantucket, designed in 1970–71 by Venturi and Rauch, Architects. — Between 2013 and 2021, the Architectural Archives collaborated on the organization of a number of major traveling retrospective exhibitions. These included Louis Kahn: The Power of Architecture (organized by the Vitra Design Museum; 2012–17), an exhibition presented at eight venues across Europe, Asia, and the United States and seen by over 450,000 people; and Experiments in Environment: The Halprin Workshops, 1966–71 (organized by the Graham Foundation, Chicago; 2014–16), and seen at venues in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. — The Archives played a lead role in organizing a series of three exhibitions marking the 50th anniversary of the publication of Ian McHarg’s Design With Nature. The project, entitled Design With Nature Now, was funded through a grant from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage. Two more grants from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage made possible the exhibitions of Shofuso and Modernism, which drew heavily on the Archives collections and was guest curated by William Whitaker, and What Minerva Built, an exhibition focused on America’s first independent female architect, Minerva Parker Nichols (1863–1949). Additional exhibitions organized by the Archives and presented in the Harvey & Irwin Kroiz Gallery included White Towers Revisited (2015); Barton Meyers: Works of Architecture and Urbanism (in collaboration with the University of California Santa Barbara, Art, Design and Architecture Museum; 2015–16); Harriet Pattison: Gardens and Landscapes (2016); KieranTimberlake: Drawn + Quartered (2016); Back Matter: The Making of Robert Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction (2016–17); Mario Romañach: Do You Love Architecture? (2017–18); and Drawing: Laurie Olin (2018).
12 Lead by Design Campaign Impact Report
