Events

Exhibit Opening – Harry Seidler: Painting Toward Architecture

6:00 p.m. – Harry Seidler Modernist film screening
7:00 pm – Exhibition Opening
7:30 pm – Q&A with Kenneth Frampton, Abby Suckle, Jeremy Edmiston; moderated by curator Vladimir Belogolovsky

Harry Seidler: Painting Toward Architecture is a traveling exhibition tracing the work of Australia’s most prominent architect of the 20th century, Harry Seidler; it examines his distinctive place and hand within and beyond modernist design methodology. Dozens of featured projects—from single family houses to multi-story residential and office towers to civic, sports, and cultural centers, as well as important government commissions realized in Australia, Austria, France, Israel, Italy, Mexico, and Hong Kong—bring to focus Seidler’s 12 long-lasting creative collaborations with progressive artistic visionaries: architects Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and Oscar Niemeyer; engineer Pier Luigi Nervi; artists Josef Albers, Alexander Calder, Norman Carlberg, Sol LeWitt, Charles Perry, Frank Stella, and Lin Utzon; and photographer Max Dupain. The exhibition was developed by New York-based non-profit Curatorial Project in collaboration with Penelope Seidler and The Seidler Estate in Sydney.

Surprise and Delight—these are the two key feelings that strike anyone who experiences Seidler’s architecture, no matter how familiar one might be with his work. His forms are never illogical, yet they are always remarkable and beautiful, so much more so as they are achieved through the economy of means. The architect’s houses and towers are thoroughly referential in their sources of inspiration and yet they are unmistakably Seidleresque. Above all, Seidler’s architecture has become an integral part of the Australian identity.

Exhibition continues through November 22.

Speakers

Kenneth Frampton (b. 1930) was trained as an architect at the Architectural Association in London. He is a British-American historian and professor of history and theory of architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University in New York since 1972, and is the author of Harry Seidler: Four Decades of Architecture (1992) and Seidler at Riverside Centre: A Retrospective Synthesis (1988). His most important writings include Towards a Critical Regionalism (1983); Modern Architecture: A Critical History (1980; revised 1985, 1992, 2007, 2017); Studies in Tectonic Culture (1995); a collection of writings over a period of 35 years titled Labour, Work and Architecture (2002); and A Genealogy of Modern Architecture: Comparative Critical Analysis of Built Form (2015).

Abby Suckle received her Master of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and her undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to opening her own architectural firm, she practiced architecture with Pei Cobb Freed & Partners; her major projects include New York Presbyterian Hospital, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and the San Francisco Main Library. As the President of cultureNOW, Ms. Suckle has designed and distributed over 650,000 cultural and historical maps of New York including the most Lower Manhattan Then and NOW. She leads the Museum Without Walls project. Ms. Suckle is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. In 2012 she received the AIA NY State Presidents Award and the National AIA Collaborative Achievement Award.

Jeremy Edmiston is an Associate Professor at City College and Principal of System Architects. He worked in Harry Seidler’s office from 1983 to 1991.

Vladimir Belogolovsky is the founder of the New York-based Curatorial Project, which focuses on curating and designing architectural exhibitions worldwide. He graduated from The Cooper Union School of Architecture in 1996. His books include Harry Seidler: The Exhibition (Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers, 2017); Harry Seidler: LIFEWORK (Rizzoli, 2014); Conversations with Peter Eisenman: The Evolution of Architectural Style (DOM, 2016); and Conversations with Architects in the Age of Celebrity (DOM, 2015). He has curated over 50 exhibitions, including Harry Seidler: Painting Toward Architecture world tour, and he has lectured at universities and museums in more than 30 countries.