This page contains information on past Gamble House events.
For current events, see our main Events page.
Updated July 7, 2008
May 20 – July 2, 2008
Aesthetes, Bohemians & Craftsmen: Artistic Dress, 1880s-1920s
Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising
A second exhibition, curated by FIDM at their downtown Museum and Galleries, will explore the artistic dress movement over a forty-year time span of changing morals and attitudes relating to dress and positions in society. Examples of Greene and Greene decorative arts and others from the period will set the scene in the galleries. The exhibition will open on May 19, 2008 and continue through July 3, 2008.
A one-day conference hosted by FIDM in conjunction with the two exhibitions is scheduled for May 31.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Experience the city filled with music. Over 100 free concerts, six main stages, and other small and unusual locations.
The Gamble House will feature two acoustic music groups on the rear terrace:
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From 12:30 - 1:15 — Kaedmon
"Kaedmon plays sweet and grooving Celtic music with decided Beatle-esque, pop music influences. They craft precise harmonies and instrumental arrangements." The band is made up of songwriters and multi-instrumentalists writing songs with a diverse range of instrumentation ranging from guitar and mandolin to box drum and pennywhistle . . . think Americana with a whistle.
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From 1:45 - 2:30 — Banna Beag Mall
Banna Beag Mall is an eclectic Celtic-influenced acoustic band with local roots playing everything from Irish and Scottish music to Italian, Latin American, country and punk rock music. They play fast or slow as the mood strikes them, but always with feeling. Their musical styles cover a thousand years, from medieval harmonics to socially relevant hip-hop. They sing in six languages: English, Spanish, Italian, Cajun French and 2 dialects of Gaelic. There's something for everyone.
Visit the House, stroll the garden, shop in the bookstore and linger on the terrace to listen to vocal harmonies.
April 13 – June 8, 2008
Fashionable Dress in an Artistic Landmark
For 6 glorious weeks, The Gamble House can be viewed both as an architectural masterpiece and as a private home. 12 mannequins dressed in 1908 fashions and accessories, representing David and Mary Gamble, their children, aunt Julia, household staff, Charles Greene and visitors will be on view inside the House.
This very unusual exhibition featuring the House as a family home, consists of mannequins located in several rooms and placed in vignettes. Mr. David Gamble is in the living room wearing a silk dressing gown along with Charles Greene in a pinstripe shirt with drawings under his arm. Mrs. Mary Gamble can be seen in the dining room wearing an exquisite afternoon frock and her sister, Julia Huggins, is seated in her bedroom in a wicker rocking chair in a slightly out-of-date dress. 2 of the sons are dressed for sport activity, there is a gentleman in the downstairs guest bedroom bathroom less than fully dressed, and a uniformed household member, to mention a few. The House feels as if the family is in residence.
The exhibition is curated by FIDM/Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising Museum & Galleries from their collection of over 12,000 costumes. This exciting partnership is a 3-phase celebration of The Gamble House Centennial 1908-2008. Phase 2 is "Aesthetes, Bohemians & Craftsmen: Artistic Dress, 1880s-1920s. The 3rd phase of the celebration is a one-day Artistic Dress conference at FIDM on May 31. See details below.
To view The Gamble House and the family in their 1908 attire, join one of our regular docent-led tours, Thursday-Sunday from noon – 3 p.m. (last admission). For tour hours and fees, to arrange a private group tour or one of our special Behind The Velvet Ropes tours please visit the Tour page on this website.
Kevin Jones, exhibition curator, commented that the contrast between how the Gambles dressed and what the 30,000 or so annual visitors to the house often wear today serves as a reminder of the age of the House. In 1908 when the house was built by Charles and Henry Greene for David and Mary Gamble it was ahead of the times, but, judging from family photographs, he said, “their clothes were typical, conventional, not haute-couture, and quite comfortable. The Gambles would have found people wearing shorts and T-shirts quite shocking.”
April 24, 2008
Horton Residence, 1932, Bel-Air, California.
Gerard Colcord: Hollywood’s Society
Architect
Bret Parsons
From 1924 through 1984, Gerard Colcord created a significant architectural legacy amid the Southern California residential landscape. He worked in a variety of styles including classic Tudor, Country French, Hollywood Regency, Spanish Hacienda and Monterey Colonial and, perhaps his best-known genre, the sprawling gentleman farmhouse.
Parsons will explore the:
- Tremendous architectural variety of Colcord’s work;
- Motion pictures in which his homes played a starring role;
- Anatomy of the beloved “Colcord farmhouse”;
- Keys to the architect’s success.
The author of Gerard Colcord: Hollywood’s Society Architect, Bret Parsons spent 18 years in the architecture and design industry; many in the executive suite at Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles. During that time he co-published three design trade books and wrote monthly architecture and design columns.
April 26, 2008
Tour it: Design for Elegant Living
Tour (self-drive) three classic Colcord residences in the
Pasadena/San Fernando Valley area. These sprawling country
estates feature lavish gardens, half-timbered walls and
hand-carved detailing – all throwbacks to an era of style and
panache. An elegant, country lunch (available for purchase) will
be served in the garden.
March 27, 2008
Christine Casey, Irish Scholar, lectures at The Gamble House
Visit Dublin as an architect, tourist, or armchair traveller under the guidance of noted Irish scholar Christine Casey, as she reveals the City of Dublin’s churches, public buildings, streets, canals and private homes, at an illustrated lecture.
Casey’s views of Dublin from Gothic to 21st century will come to life in the setting of the 100-year old Gamble House in Pasadena. She will feature grand 18th century set pieces, Georgian cityscapes, commercial Victorian architecture, post-war buildings, and a new generation of Irish architects.
This special lecture is co-sponsored by the USC/Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, USC’s Institute for British and Irish Studies, and the Huntington/USC Institute on California and the West, with additional support from The Gamble House, Caltech and the Modern Language Society.
Dr Christine Casey is a senior lecturer in the School of Art History & Cultural Policy at University College Dublin and author of the critically acclaimed Dublin: The City Within the Grand and Royal Canals, and the Circular Road, with the Phoenix Park (Yale University Press, 2005). An honorary member of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland she has served on the boards of the Irish Georgian Society and the Irish Architectural Archive and on the architectural committee of the Heritage Council.
March 20, 2008
Details from, left to right, “Impression Sunrise,” by Claude Monet, 1872; “The Fairy Tale,” by William Merritt Chase, 1892; “Landscape,” by William Lees Judson, undated; “Georgic Landscape,”
by David Ligare, 2005
Plein Air: From Giverny to the Arroyo
Ronald E. Steen
Developed in late-19th century France by painters who defied convention as they carried their canvases outdoors to interpret everyday scenes shining in a natural light, the plein air technique quickly spread to the East Coast of the United States and on to Southern California.
Ronald E. Steen will chart the progress of the movement from:
- Monet and French Impressionism to
- William Merritt Chase and American Impressionism to
- Southern California’s plein air artists to
- The San Gabriel Valley and William Lees Judson.
Ronald E. Steen, an art historian and educator, has been an instructor at California State University-Fullerton and lectured for the J. Paul Getty Museum Education Department. He is Curator of Exhibitions and Director of Programming and Education at The Judson Gallery of Contemporary and Traditional Art at Judson Studios.
March 22, 2008
Tour it: The View From Here
See Southern California through the eyes of present-day landscape
and cityscape painters in this dynamic group exhibition
at the Judson Gallery, 200 South Avenue 66, Los Angeles.
January 26, 2008
Tour It: La Miniatura
Living room.
Cast in Concrete: Frank Lloyd Wright in Pasadena
Here is an extraordinary opportunity to tour Wright’s unique textile-block commission, La Miniatura (1923), originally envisioned as a Mayan ruin set in a jungle ravine. Rarely open to the public, this spectacular private home is a restoration in progress.
Tour the main house, a mysterious and exotic blend of wood, stone and ironwork, and Lloyd Wright’s studio building, added in 1926.
Lunch, available for purchase, will be served in the gardens in the shadow of La Miniatura.
Frank Lloyd Wright said of this commission, “I would rather have built this little house than St. Peter’s in Rome” Join us for this singular opportunity.
January 25, 2008
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright: The Southwest Legacy
Frank Henry
Frank Lloyd Wright discovered the Southwest in the latter half of his life, its vast landscapes inspiring him to produce some of his greatest works. He developed the “Romanza” style, with its unique textured concrete block houses, for Southern California in the early 1920s. While in Arizona in 1929, the drama and beauty of the desert triggered what he called “a catharsis of his spirit” and his winter home, Taliesin West, was born.
Frank Henry will highlight:
- The climatic factors that affected Wright’s organic approach to architecture;
- The biological discoveries he made that spawned new structural concepts and uses of materials;
- The overall effect of his Southwest experiences on his later work.
After meeting Frank Lloyd Wright, Frank Henry decided to become an architect. He is currently the Studio Master at The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture and gives tours, lectures and conducts research on the architecture of the Southwest.
Josef Hoffmann, Bergerhöhe dining-sitting room, 1899, Austria
October 23, 2007
Vienna 1900: A Most Radical
Reinvention
Christian Witt-Dörring
Neighborhood Church
2 Westmoreland Place,
Pasadena
Gustav Klimt. Otto Wagner. Gustav Mahler. Sigmund Freud. The explosion of art, architecture, music, philosophy and science caused many to refer to Vienna in 1900 as “the experiment at the end of the world.” Out of this fin de siècle creative chaos emerged a groundbreaking design vocabulary that would set the prerequisites of modernism.
Christian Witt-Dörring will examine:
- Joseph Hoffmann and Koloman Moser’s design process in architecture and the decorative arts;
- The debate between the modern style in Vienna (as
created by Otto Wagner and Adolf Loos) and
international modernism.
After more then 25 years as curator of the furniture collection at the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts (M A K), Christian Witt-Dörring now runs a consulting
business and is curator for decorative arts at the Neue Galerie New York.
Lawry’s the Prime Rib, 1947, Los Angeles, California. Photograph courtesy of the Chris
Nichols Collection from The Leisure Architecture of Wayne McAllister.
October 13, 2007
A Place in the Sun: The Leisure Architecture
of Wayne McAllister
Chris Nichols
Wayne McAllister was an iconoclast; an unlicensed,
untrained designer who created an incredible series of
hotels, restaurants and nightclubs that epitomized the
chrome-and-neon mood of mid-century Los Angeles and
defined a fledgling Las Vegas.
In his biography and pop culture history tour of Hollywood
and Las Vegas at their most glamorous, Chris Nichols will:
- Reveal how a high school student was tapped to design a
$2-billion dollar project;
- Detail how McAllister “invented” Las Vegas and created
the first resort hotel in the desert;
- Visit his “Fred and Ginger” nightclubs, the Streamline
Moderne drive-in restaurants and his cool modernism in the
hot desert.
Author of The Leisure Architecture of Wayne McAllister,
Chris Nichols has helped create conferences and tours for
the National Trust, California Preservation Foundation
and the Los Angeles Conservancy, where he chaired the
Modern Committee.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Museums of the Arroyo Day
On Sunday, May 20, 2007 (11 a.m. to 5 p.m.) the 18th annual Museums of the Arroyo (MOTA) Day invites the public to tour six museums located along the celebrated Arroyo Seco in Los Angeles and Pasadena for a free day of music, storytelling, art, crafts and entertainment.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Gardens of Intrigue: Greenscapes of Magic and Mystery
Heather Lenkin
White rose garden, designed by Heather Lenkin.
An architect, and landscape and interior designer, Heather
Lenkin will explore the natural splendor found in 21 gardens
that surround her 1923 Italianate home. For 18 years she has
planted, renovated, restored and rehabilitated the distinctive
gardens on the 1-acre, steeply sloping hillside site to
complement the home’s architecture and interior design.
Multiple outdoor seating and dining areas and water features
are incorporated into this plant collector’s garden, which now
has more than 1,000 plant species and 10,000 bulbs. Garden
Design magazine has called her work “history in the making.”
Lenkin will share her passion and award-winning garden
design principles, including:
- Considerations of scale;
- Enhancing existing architecture;
- Looking to historic sources;
- Linking the interior to the exterior;
- Choosing plants sympathetic to the climate;
- Using color, structure and light.
President of Lenkin Design in Pasadena, Heather Lenkin is a
two-time winner of the Golden Trowel Award from Garden
Design magazine honoring excellence in creating “America’s
Best Gardens.” Her alma mater, the University of Arizona, has
recognized her with its Professional Achievement Award and
designated an area of the Norton School as the Heather
Henricks Lenkin Honor Student Center.
Free tour: One acre, 21 gardens
A self-guided tour of Heather Lenkin’s personal gardens will
immediately follow the lecture.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Booksigning by California photographer Marvin Rand
Please join us at the Gamble House bookstore where Marvin Rand will sign his two books of architectural photography: the recently published Irving J. Gill, and his classic work Greene and Greene. Both coffee table books are published by Gibbs Smith.
Friday, March 23, 2007
California in a Container: Cliff May and the Modern Ranch House
Daniel Gregory
May House, Los Angeles; photograph by Julius Shulman, 1954. ©J. Paul Getty Trust*
You could call Cliff May the father of the suburban ranch
house as more than 18,000 of them were built using his
designs. The best of them managed to be both modern and
traditional, celebrating a casually elegant, indoor-outdoor way of life that became synonymous with the California
Dream. An early description in Sunset Magazine said it all:
Cliff May’s houses “ramble almost to the point of departure,
with lines as natural and satisfying as those of the hills.” In
other words, the house was actually a landscape. You just
had to add water.
Highlights of the lecture will include:
- Cliff May’s early career;
- His evolving brand of regional modernity;
- His inevitable discovery by the press;
- His perfection of what might be called the
architectural palindrome.
Daniel Gregory is Senior Editor, Special Projects/Home for
Sunset Magazine. He has contributed essays on William
Wurster and Thomas Church to several books, and wrote the
introduction for Greene & Greene by Marvin Rand. He is at
work on a book about Cliff May’s ranch houses for Rizzoli.
March 24, 2007
Additional tour: Designs on the Good Life
In a sylvan Brentwood canyon, just steps from busy Sunset
Boulevard, Cliff May created what many believe to be the
finest interpretation of the California lifestyle ever realized.
Join us for a rare opportunity to enter this private world and
experience the ultimate in “Ranch House Deluxe.”
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Rudolph M. Schindler: Architect, Builder, Theorist, Utopian
Kimberli Meyer
The Rodriguez House, 1942.
Rudolph M. Schindler left Vienna for the United States in
1914, working first in Chicago for Frank Lloyd Wright,
then settling in Los Angeles. Schindler rejected not only
traditional styles of architecture but also the dominant form
of modernism of his day, the International Style. He believed
in the continuity of architecture and life, in the relation
between site and building, and in the blending of the
indoors and outdoors.
In the lecture Meyer will:
- Examine Schindler’s own house and studio on Kings Road
as the purest expression of his ideals and the most radical of
his experiments;
- Discuss Schindler’s concept of “space architecture”;
- Explore his most important houses, all sculptural, efficient,
sensual and attuned to the climate and the body.
Kimberli Meyer is an architect and the Director of the M A K
Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles at the Schindler
House. She is co-curator of the exhibition “The Gen(h)ome
Project” (October 28, 2006-February 25, 2007) at the Schindler House in West Hollywood.
February 24, 2007
Additional tour: Art and Geometry
The 1942 commission for composer Jose Rodriguez in the
Verdugo Woodlands of Glendale pays homage to Taliesin
West. Dynamic, exposed roof rafters wrap around walls of
glass. The house bridges the gently sloping lot, creating
gardens that sweep up, around and beneath the structure,
one of Schindler’s least-altered homes.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
William Lees Judson: Craftsman at Heart, Painter by Trade
David Judson
The Bridge,
circa 1915, by William Lees Judson.
From the moment his train pulled into Pasadena in
December 1893, William Lees Judson knew he would never
reside in another place. This pioneering painter came to
Southern California to live out his days in a warm climate,
only to be reinvigorated by the idealism and optimism of
the day. A Civil War veteran, artistically trained in Europe,
Judson would become known simply as “The Professor.”
Though lesser known, this premier plein air painter would
leave an artistic legacy that continues to this day.
Aspects of Judson’s life and career to be discussed include:
- His extensive travels that furthered his career as an
art professor and painter;
- Judson’s role as author, professor, craftsman, activist and
early environmentalist;
- His contributions to the art world of Southern California
as the founder and first dean of U S C’s School of Fine Arts
and the founder of the Judson stained glass studios.
Since 1997, David Judson, of the family’s fifth generation,
has run the Judson Studios. He joined the firm by founding
the Judson Gallery of Contemporary and Traditional Art.
David has lectured extensively on Judson and stained glass
and is currently working on Judson’s biography.
January 27, 2007
Additional tour: The Art and Craft of Light
The Judson Studios, founded in 1897, is the oldest stained
glass studio in the United States still owned and operated by
the same family. There artists continue to design, create and
restore stained glass nationally and internationally. It is listed
on the National Register of Historic Places.
Saturday, November 4, 2006
Modernism’s Auteur: L.A. Through the Lens of Julius Shulman
At the Ahmanson Auditorium, Art Center College of Design, 1700 Lida St., Pasadena (Google map; please park in the student
parking lot.)
Maslon House, Palm Springs, by Richard Neutra, 1962; Photograph by Julius Shulman, 1963. © J. Paul Getty Trust*
Legendary architectural photographer Julius Shulman will
discuss his body of work, including his recent project
photographing the newly renovated Getty Villa in Malibu.
Since 1936 Shulman has been the visual recorder of
modern designs throughout 45 states of the country and
internationally. His images promoted the work of numerous
visionary architects worldwide.
Highlights of the presentation will include:
- The photographer’s relationship to the development of
modern architecture in Los Angeles;
- The tactics, techniques and challenges of architectural
photography;
- A question-and-answer session with Mr. Shulman.
Sunday, May 7, 2006
Museums of the
Arroyo Day
Five museums located along the Arroyo
Seco celebrate by opening their doors to the public
free of charge on this special Sunday, from 11 a.m. to
5 p.m. Free shuttles connect the five museums so that
visitors can enjoy a day of exhibitions, special
events, crafts and family fun.
October 15, 2005
Architects Conrad
Buff III & Donald Hensman Home Tour & Events:
Homes for the upcoming Conrad Buff III and Donald Hensman October celebration have been announced: four homes in Pasadena, and one in Altadena, will be on the tour while another Pasadena residence will serve as the locale for the opening night reception.
Sponsored by USC School of Architecture, the Friends of the Gamble House and the Pasadena & Foothill Chapter AIA, the October 15th tour is part of a larger tribute to Buff and Hensman with events that also include a symposium and an opening night reception. The home tour will feature some of the best work of Buff and Hensman who helped define the ultra cool California modern architecture scene of the 1950-60s, says Edward Bosley, director of the Gamble House.
“Before his death in 2002, Hensman personally selected these homes as outstanding examples,” says Bosley. “They are rich in history and for those interested in modern architecture; this tour will be a great lesson in how master designers worked with materials, the surrounding landscape and the client’s needs.”
Indeed, the influence of Buff and Hensman is significant, according to Barton Anderson, president of the Pasadena & Foothill AIA. “They helped define an era with dynamic designs that are evocative of the quintessential Southern California lifestyle,” he says, adding that Buff and Hensman played an important role in articulating a regional style of “beauty, grace and what have proven to be highly sought after homes.”
Tour Date: October 15, 2005
Scheduled from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on October 15th, the shuttle tour will take ticket holders to five private Buff and Hensman homes some never before open to the public.
Opening Reception, October 14
An opening night reception at Buff and Hensman’s Peck (Shiell-Shallack) House in Pasadena at 7:30 p.m. on October 14.
Homes on the October 15 Tour
- The Moseley Residence
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Situated on a Pasadena hillside, this house features a dramatic 180-degree view of the San Gabriel Valley. The one-story house takes full advantages of its modest size with flowing spaces connecting the rooms. From the motor court, an 8-foot, carved, sliding gate serves as the dramatic entrance to the interior reflecting pool and house
- The King Residence
- Under the historic Colorado Street Bridge that spans the Arroyo Seco, this sheltered hideaway is true Southern California living that takes advantage of an open atmosphere with no hallways or formal separations. Outside, pathways are defined by gravel, concrete and railroad ties and the terraces are surrounded by the remains of a river-rock wall.
- The Hernandez Residence
- Built for a large family, this Pasadena house with an imposing view, accommodates three children’s bedrooms each complete with a study, bath and large wardrobe area. Reached by a concealed spiral staircase is an office with a balcony that overlooks the first floor and the stunning views. A spline of tan limestone leads outside to a waterfall and reflection pool.
- Bass Residence, Case Study #20
- Using several, innovative and prefabricated Douglas fir plywood products as part of its structural concept, this newly restored Altadena house (built from 1958-60) is based on a structural grid module of steel columns and plywood box beams. All major rooms open directly into a garden court. Diffused and cove lighting are used throughout creating warm and intimate spaces.
- Conrad Buff III (Zendle/Hanson) House
- Built in 1977 for himself and his wife, Buff called this modest 1,600 square-foot house Rapor. Perched on a private knoll and with views of the entire San Gabriel Valley, the house is a peaceful, secluded retreat. Materials used here are simple but elegant: redwood, teak, stucco, glass and quarry tile. Natural and artificial light are essential components of the design that includes 75 light sources in the living room alone.
About Conrad Buff III and Donald Hensman
Born in Nebraska in 1924, Donald Hensman graduated from Hollywood High School, served in the navy during World War II and entered USC School of Architecture on the GI Bill in 1948. At USC, Hensman met his collaborator of 40 years, Conrad Buff III. Born in Los Angeles, Buff also arrived at USC after wartime service in the Navy. Both were elevated to Fellowship in the AIA: Buff in 1980 and Hensman in 1982.
Like other architects who participated in the Case Study program of the '50s and '60s, Buff and Hensman were partial to post-and-beam construction, glass walls and floor plans that often served as elegant solutions to difficult sites. Producing an impressive body of work during their long partnership, Buff and Hensman contributed to the innovative and transformative architectural styles that were to define an era. They designed homes for many celebrities like Joan Collins, James Garner, Steve McQueen, Frank Sinatra and Paul Anka as well as the Governor’s Mansion for Ronald Reagan.
Hensman continued to work after Buff died in 1988, creating designs into the dawn of 21st Century. Hensman died in 2002 at the age of 78.
About James Steele
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Steele received his Bachelor and Master Degrees in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. He practiced architecture in and around Philadelphia prior to teaching in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from 1980-1990.
Steele served as the Senior Editor at Academy Editions from 1990-1991 and has been an associate professor at USC since 1991. His publications include: The Complete Works of Hassan Fathy; Los Angeles: The Contemporary Condition, Architecture Today and Architecture and Computers.
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Transylvania!
Arts and Crafts Movement in Hungary?
A Gamble House lecture
by Anthony Gall, author and preservation architect
specializing in the work of Kos and Hungarian
Arts and Crafts.
The Gamble House will
present a special lecture on March 31st, by Anthony
Gall, on the inspired architecture of Hungarian-Transylvanian
architect/craftsman Karoly Kos and the Hungarian
Arts and Crafts movement.
Gall’s illustrated lecture will discuss works
of major Hungarian architects and applied artists
from this period as an introduction to the work
of Kos who created some of the most important vernacular-inspired
masterpieces of the Hungarian Arts and Crafts period.
The Budapest Zoo Pavilions, Kos’s studio
home in Transylvania, and other important projects
will be presented in the context of Transylvanian
folk architecture, which inspired it, and emphasis
will be placed on the beautiful craftsmanship and
detailing which resulted from this connection. Recent
renovations of the pavilions of the Budapest Zoo
will also be described
At the turn of the Twentieth Century, the twin-capitals
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Vienna and Budapest
were significant centers of art and architectural
production. The Viennese Secession and the
Hungarian "Szecesszió" both describe
a new beginning, and a break with the past. Exquisite
examples of work from this period can be seen at
the Los Angeles County Art Museum exhibition: The
Arts and Crafts Movement in Europe and America, 1880–1920:
Design for the Modern World
Lecturer Anthony
Gall
Anthony
Gall is a Lecturer in Architecture at the University
of Queensland and principal of Gall and Associates
Architects in Budapest. An award-winning architect,
he was Chief Architect for the Restoration of the
Budapest Zoo and Botanic Gardens (a National Monument)
and was awarded one of Europe's most prestigious
awards for Heritage Reconstruction (Europa Nostra)
in 2000. His extensive monograph on Károly
Kós, was published in 2002.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
What Did They Hear?: The Musical Landscape of the Early 20th Century
Charles McKnight
Schoenberg, Prokofieff and Joplin; music from the early 20th century.
The first decades of the 20th century were teeming with innovations
in musical style. Russian, German, French and American composers
sought to find new ways to express the dynamic nature of modern society.
At the same time, many composers were taken with a nostalgia for
the past. The variety of approaches to musical style, some of which
will be sampled during this lecture, created an excitement about
contemporary developments that is unparalleled in musical history.
McKnight will explore some of the styles and their affinities with
the visual and literary arts including Impressionism, Expressionism,
Primitivism, and Nationalism.
About the lecturer: Charles McKnight is associate
professor of music at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.
He holds degrees in music performance and music history from Stetson
University, Yale University and Cornell University. A specialist
in the history of Russian music, he has done extensive research on
the interaction of music and politics in the early Soviet period.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Architecture and Identity in the Southern Pacific: The New Zealand
Contemporaries of Greene and Greene, 1885-1915
Ian Lochhead
William Henry Gummer, Tauroa, Havelock North, New Zealand, 1916.
At the beginning of the 20th century, progressive New Zealand architects,
like their American contemporaries, were searching for ways in which
to express an emerging sense of national identity. As they sought
to break free from the twin shackles of a dominant English tradition
and 19th century historicism, they discovered in the ideals of the
Arts and Crafts movement a means of expressing both national and
regional identities. Drawing inspiration from the work of colonial
architects as well as from their British and American contemporaries,
architects such as Samuel Hurst Seager, Basil Hooper and James Chapman
Taylor developed a regionally distinctive Arts and Crafts architecture
as yet little known beyond New Zealand.
Issues to be examined include:
- Links and parallels with contemporary British and American architecture;
- Samuel Hurst Seager’s independent development of the timber
bungalow from 1900 on;
- The use of motifs derived from indigenous flora and fauna;
- Architects’ attitudes toward the art traditions of the
Maori.
About the lecturer: Ian Lochhead is associate professor
of art history at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New
Zealand. He has written extensively on the history of New Zealand
architecture, with particular emphasis on the Gothic Revival and
Arts and Crafts movements. In 2000 he was Laing visiting professor
of architecture at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
The Color Woodcut and American Arts & Crafts
David Acton
Marsh Moon, circa 1925, by William Seltzer Rice.
From the 1890s through the 1930s and beyond, the craft of color
woodcut flourished in the United States as never before. Inspired
by longtime European traditions, professional artists and amateurs
explored the medium as a way to multiply their designs. In New England
and in Northern California, others explored Asian printmaking, combining
their techniques and styles with those of European art. Vivid in
hue and consciously aesthetic in style, these works were immensely
popular as decorative accents in Arts and Crafts-style architecture.
The simplicity of their facture encouraged innovation, and the most
skillful artists developed their own, highly individualized modes
of working. Thus the diversity of this fashion made it distinctly
American.
In a broad, lavishly illustrated survey of this period, Acton will
discuss the art and its innovators:
- The technical rudiments of European and Japanese color woodcut;
- Intrepid female printmakers;
- Arthur Wesley Dow, Ernest Fenollosa and Japonisme;
- The Provincetown Print;
- Western dissemination of color woodcut;
- Gustave Baumann and the Southwest.
About the lecturer: David Acton is curator of prints,
drawings and photographs at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts.
Among his books are A Spectrum of Innovation: Color in American
Printmaking 1890-1960, and monographic studies of Arthur Wesley
Dow, Blanche Lazzell and Gustave Baumann.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Building for Nature: The Architecture of Walter Burley Griffin
Paul Kruty
The Joshua Melson house in Mason City, Iowa.
Walter Burley Griffin (1876-1937) was the most international of
the early 20th century American Modernists, with careers successively
in America, Australia and India. Surpassed only by Louis Sullivan
and Frank Lloyd Wright in importance among Chicago’s Prairie
School, his achievement exceeded theirs in its great breadth. His
organic approach to design, materials and the environment—as
revealed in two of his most complete projects, Rock Crest/Rock Glen
in Mason City, Iowa, and Castlecrag near Sydney, Australia—were
remarkably ahead of their time and continue to serve as model solutions
for many contemporary problems of context and sustainability.
Among Griffin’s achievements:
- Uniting architecture, landscape architecture and urban planning
into a single discipline;
- Creating an alternative organic form of modern American architecture
to those of Sullivan and Wright;
- Combining the Arts and Crafts values of materiality, craftsmanship
and place with modern technology and systems of construction.
About the lecturer: Paul Kruty teaches the history
of Modern and American architecture at the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign. The author of Frank Lloyd Wright and Midway
Gardens and Walter Burley Griffin in America, he has
published numerous articles on the architects of Chicago’s
Prairie School, including Wright, Griffin, Robert Spencer and George
Elmslie. His lecture venues have included the Griffin Society of
Australia, the Frank LloydWright Home & Studio Foundation and
the Arts and Crafts conference in Perry, Iowa.
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Organic Beauty: Japanese-Style Gardens for Arts & Crafts Houses
Kendall H. Brown
A 1910 landscape design for the N. Lee Stary house in Los Angeles.
In the first decades of the 20th century, Japanese-style gardens
were built across North America. Popularized at world’s fairs
and other commercial venues, these gardens were soon used residentially,
adorning the great estates of the wealthy and the humble bungalows
of the middle class. Yet nowhere did the Japanese garden find a more
congenial setting than at Arts and Crafts houses, where Japanese
aesthetics and motifs were integral to the design.
Characteristics of these gardens include:
- Integration of the garden with the residence;
- Dramatic use of architectural and ornamental elements;
- Emphasis on organic, “natural” features;
- Conception of Japanese culture as an antidote to industrialization.
About the lecturer: Kendall H. Brown is associate
professor of Asian art history in the department of art at California
State University, Long Beach, and adjunct curator of Japanese art
at the Pacific Asia Museum. He has published widely on the subject
including the book Japanese-Style Gardens of the Pacific West
Coast. He is currently a fellow in landscape history at Dumbarton
Oaks in Washington, D.C., where he is writing a book on the social
history of Japanese-style gardens in North America.
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Radical but Reserved: The Englishness of English Arts & Crafts
Alan Crawford
The Arts and Crafts movement got its start in England, with the
writings of John Ruskin and the example of William Morris, and
we often think of it as having spread from England to other countries.
But, as the forthcoming Arts and Crafts exhibition at the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art will make clear, the movement was not
simply an English export: It was Belgian in Belgium, Finnish in Finland, American
in America. It was also peculiarly English in England, and Crawford
will explore its main features there including:
- A vague but powerful anti-industrialism;
- An emphasis on method and substance in design, reacting against
the superficiality of commercial decorative art;
- Love of the countryside;
- Close links with the upper and upper-middle classes.
About the lecturer: Alan Crawford lives in London
where he is a freelance historian specializing in British architecture
and decorative arts in the decades around 1900. He is the author
of C.R. Ashbee: Architect, Designer and Romantic Socialist and Charles
Rennie Mackintosh, and is currently working on a book about
the Arts and Crafts movement in England.
This page contains information on past Gamble House events.
