Event: Society of Architectural Historians Announces Inaugural Eduard F. Sekler Talk. Providence, Rhode Island, 25 April 2019
SAH 72nd Annual International Conference
The Society of Architectural Historians is pleased to announce the inaugural Eduard F. Sekler Talk, established this year by a gift from Mary Patricia May Sekler in honor of her late husband, architectural historian and longtime SAH member Eduard F. Sekler (1920–2017). The Sekler Talk will bring a notable speaker to the SAH conference each year to address a topic related to architecture, urbanism, preservation, the state of the field of architectural history, or a combination thereof.
Distinguished architectural historian, writer, and educator Joan Ockman will deliver the 2019 Sekler Talk at the SAH 72nd Annual International Conference in Providence, Rhode Island.
“We are grateful for the Sekler gift and memorial lecture, which honors a distinguished, longtime SAH member who mentored many young scholars through their dissertation work at Harvard,” said Pauline Saliga, executive director of SAH.
2019 EDUARD F. SEKLER TALK
Joan Ockman, “On the Future History of Modern Architecture”
Thursday, April 25, 8:00–8:20 pm
First Baptist Church Meeting House
75 N Main St., Providence, Rhode Island
“The past is a foreign country.” So it seems at times from the perspective of the early twenty-first century. An epoch of incessant technological innovation, global restructuring, climate change, and fallout from postmodernism has shattered our understanding and interpretation of what we used to call modern architecture. In schools of architecture today, the presence of the future is much stronger than the presence of the past. As the twentieth century recedes, does the term “modernism” still have any meaning? How to name and frame the period we are in now?