Wednesday, October 15, 6:00pm - 8:00 pm

At The Center  

In June 2014, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation launched its first open, international, anonymous architectural competition for the design of a proposed Guggenheim Museum in Helsinki. Join moderator Joel Sanders, AIA Professor Adjunct, Yale School of Architecture, and panelists Cara Cragan, Director of Architectural Projects, Helsinki and Abu Dhabi, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; Jeanne Gang, FAIA, Principal and Founder, Studio Gang Architects; Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, Associate Professor, Yale School of Architecture; and Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, for a broad-ranging discussion of topics raised by the competition that are reshaping the future of the contemporary art museum and the discipline of architecture.

Speakers:

Cara Cragan
Director of Architecture, Helsinki and Abu Dhabi, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Cara Cragan is Director of Architectural Projects, Helsinki and Abu Dhabi, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Trained as an architect, Cara has been at the Guggenheim since 2009, overseeing the design of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi building by Frank Gehry, working collaboratively with the foundation’s partners Abu Dhabi Tourism and Cultural Authority (TCA Abu Dhabi) and Tourism Development and Investment Corporation (TDIC). For the Guggenheim Helsinki project, Cara is overseeing the architectural competition, working closely with Malcolm Reading Consultants, the firm hired by the Guggenheim to independently manage the competition. From 2000-2009, Cara worked for Frank Gehry in Los Angeles in the roles of designer, project architect and project manager and was a member of the design teams for major museum-projects including Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in Toronto, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC and MARTa Herford Museum in Herford, Germany, among other project types. Cara graduated from Vassar College in New York with a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art and English and received her Master of Architecture (M. Arch I) from Yale University where, in addition to multiple teaching fellowships, she received the Gertraud A. Wood Traveling Fellowship awarded to an outstanding second year student and the AIA Henry Adams Medal awarded to the graduating student with the highest academic ranking.

Jeanne Gang
Founder and Principal, Studio Gang Architects

MacArthur Fellow Jeanne Gang is the founder and principal of Chicago-based Studio Gang Architects. Jeanne explores the role of design in revitalizing cities. Her work ranges in scale from community anchors and cultural institutions to tall mixed-use buildings and urban design. Jeanne is internationally recognized for her visually striking work and environmentally sensitive approach. With her practice, she aims to strengthen the synergy between urban and natural systems. Currently engaged in major projects throughout the world, Studio Gang recently established a New York outpost in response to the firm's rising international profile.

Nancy Spector
Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Nancy Spector received her MPhil in Art History from City University Graduate Center in New York. She is Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, where she has organized exhibitions on conceptual photography, Felix Gonzalez Torres, Matthew Barney's Cremaster cycle, Richard Prince, Louise Bourgeois, Marina Abramovic, Tino Sehgal, and Maurizio Cattelan. She also organized the group exhibitions Moving Pictures; Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated); and theanyspacewhatever. She was one of the curators of Monument to Now, an exhibition of the Dakis Joannou Collection, which premiered in Athens as part of the Olympics program. She was Adjunct Curator of the 1997 Venice Biennale and co-organizer of the first Berlin Biennial in 1998. Under the auspices of the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, she has initiated special commissions by Andreas Slominski, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Lawrence Weiner as well as a special exhibition on the work of Joseph Beuys and Matthew Barney. She has contributed to numerous books on contemporary visual culture with essays on artists such as Maurizio Cattelan, Luc Tuymans, Douglas Gordon, Tino Seghal, and Anna Gaskell. In 2007 she was the U.S. Commissioner for the Venice Biennale, where she presented an exhibition of work by Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Spector is a recipient of the Peter Norton Family Foundation Curators Award, five International Art Critics Association Awards and a Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Award for her work on Youtube Play, a Biennial of Creative Video. At the Guggenheim, she oversees the creative programming for the museum and its affiliates around the world.

Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen
Associate Professor, Yale School of Architecture

Ms. Pelkonen’s scholarly work focuses on twentieth-century European and American architecture with interest in the genesis and meaning of architectural form within various national and historical contexts. Ms. Pelkonen is the author of Achtung Architektur! Image and Phantasm in Contemporary Austrian Architecture (MIT Press, 1996) and Alvar Aalto: Architecture, Modernity and Geopolitics (Yale University Press, 2009); a coeditor of Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future (Yale, 2006) and Architecture + Art: New Visions, New Strategies (Aalto Academy, 2007); and editor of Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment (Yale, 2011). Her articles have appeared in various publications, includingDaidalos, Log, and Perspecta. Ms. Pelkonen’s book on Saarinen received the Philip Johnson Award, granted by the Society of Architectural Historians for the best exhibition catalogue of the year, and the Sir Banister Fletcher Award, granted annually by the Authors’ Club of London for the best book on art or architecture. Her book on Aalto won the Alice Davis Hitchcock Award, also granted by the Society of Architectural Historians, given annually for distinguished scholarship by a North American author. Prior to coming to Yale, Ms. Pelkonen worked in a number of European firms, most notably with Reima and Raili Pietilä, Architects, in Helsinki, Finland, and Volker Giencke, Architects, in Graz, Austria. She is currently a design associate with Turner Brooks Architects, where she has collaborated on such projects as the Gilder Boathouse for Yale and the Pelkonen/Brooks residence.

Moderator:

Joel Sanders
Professor Adjunct, Yale School of Architecture

Mr. Sanders is an architect practicing in New York City. Prior to joining Yale, he taught at Princeton University and Parsons The New School of Design. His work has been featured in numerous international exhibitions, including Open House at the Vitra Design Museum, Cut: Revealing the Section and Glamour at SF MoMA, New Hotels for Global Nomads at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, the Bienal de São Paulo, Unprivate House at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and 100 Architects of the Year 2012 at the 31st Korean Institute of Architects Convention and Exhibition. Projects designed in his practice belong to the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, SF MoMA, Art Institute of Chicago, and the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, and his work has been showcased in numerous publications, including Architecture, Interior Design, Architectural Record, Architectural Digest, The New York Times, Wallpaper, and A+U. Mr. Sanders has received numerous awards, including an ALA/IIDA Library Interior Design Award, six New York AIA Design Awards, two New York State AIA Design Awards, a 2008 Interior Design Magazine Best of Year Award, an AIA Westchester/Mid-Hudson Chapter Honor Award, a Boston Society of Architects Research Grant, and two Design Citations fromProgressive Architecture. The editor of Stud: Architectures of Masculinity, he frequently writes about art and design, most recently for Art Forum and the Harvard Design Magazine. Monacelli Press released a monograph of his work, Joel Sanders: Writings and Projects, in 2005, and releasedGroundwork: Between Landscape and Architecture, with Diana Balmori, in 2011.

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