Join The Glass House along with scholars Cammie McAtee, Benjamin Nicholson, and Michelangelo Sabatino for a virtual talk examining architecture, landscape, and preservation in New Harmony, IN—a unique town in the American Midwest renowned as the site of two successive Utopian settlements during the 19th century: the Harmonists and the Owenites. During the Cold War years of the 20th century, New Harmony became a spiritual “living community” thanks to the leadership and patronage of Jane Blaffer Owen and attracted a wide variety of outstanding artists, architects, and landscape architects including Philip Johnson, Frederick Kiesler, Richard Meier, Robert Zion and several others. The focus of this talk, co-presented by Historic New Harmony—University of Southern Indiana, is the sacred spaces designed by Johnson and Kiesler.

This event celebrates the recent publication of Avant-Garde in the Cornfields: Architecture, Landscape, and Preservation in New Harmony. Get 40% off when you order using code MN88870. Promotion expires June 1, 2022.

Cammie McAtee is a Montreal-based architecture and design historian and curator. She holds a PhD in the history of art and architecture from Harvard University. She was for many years a curator at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, where she was the lead researcher and assistant curator for the 2001 CCA-Whitney Museum exhibition Mies in America. 

Benjamin Nicholson was educated at the Architectural Association in London, Cooper Union School of Architecture, and Cranbrook Academy of Art, and is currently Professor Emeritus at SAIC, Chicago. He has been a named guest professor at the Universities of Edinburgh, London, Michigan, Houston and Cornell. 

Michelangelo Sabatino is Director of the Ph.D. Program in Architecture and the inaugural John Vinci Distinguished Research Fellow at the Illinois Institute of Technology. As an educator, academic administrator, and award-winning scholar, Sabatino has contributed to architectural discourse and practice in the Americas and beyond. He serves as a Director on the Docomomo US Board.

Full bios can be found on event website, link below.

Wednesday March 9, 7:00 pm
Register

Glass House Presents is an ongoing series of talks, performances, and other live events that extend the site’s historic role as a gathering place for artists, architects, and other creative minds. This event is co-hosted by New Canaan Library and supported in part by Connecticut Humanities and the New Canaan Community Foundation.