America’s Iconic Modern Homes Lecture Series Bundle

About America’s Iconic Modern Homes Lecture Series*

Join renowned experts in exploring the histories, transformative designs, and current preservation strategies for some of America’s most iconic modern homes including Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, Pennsylvania; Philip Johnson’s Glass House and Property, Connecticut; and Charles and Ray Eame’s Case Study House, California.

*Purchasers of this event Bundle will recieve a single event ticket that can be used for all three lecture dates in this series. You will be notified as dates appraoch, but please save these dates when you purchase this bundle

lectures

All lectures in this series will take place from 6:00-7:00pm in the McCulloch Pavilion, 265 S Orange Avenue

In this Series:

02/20/25 - Lecture 1

Stewards of an Icon: Louis Kahn’s Margaret Esherick House

Dan Macey, Architecture Sarasota Board Member

03/20/25 - Lecture 2

Philip Johnson, David Whitney, and the Evolution of the Glass House Estate, 1946-2024

Maureen Cassidy Geiger, MA, FSA

04/08/25 - Lecture 3

Planning, Conservation, and Support: The GCI’s work at the Eames House in Los Angeles

Chandler McCoy, AIA, LEED AP, J. Paul Getty Trust

ABOUT THE LECTURES & SPEAKERS

Preserving Fallingwater: Saving Frank Lloyd Wright’s Masterpiece of Organic Architecture

About the Lecture

Regarded as the best all-time work of American architecture, Fallingwater is celebrated as an icon of design and has been shared with the public since 1964, making it the first house of the modern movement to open as a museum. While a sculptural masterpiece, the house has been challenged with preservation issues from the very beginning—leaking roofs, rusting steel, spalling concrete, and the possible collapse of its signature cantilevers. This talk explores the unique preservation challenges that impact Fallingwater, past and present, and the importance of stewarding and interpreting this significant landmark for a global community.

About the Speaker

Justin Gunther is Vice President of the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy and Director of Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece of organic architecture, which exemplifies the harmonious relationship between people and nature through design. Prior to this role, Justin served in preservation roles at other historic sites, including curator for Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia State Capitol, manager of restoration for George Washington’s Mount Vernon, and curator for Fallingwater. For almost a decade, he also taught historic preservation at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where he focused on economic redevelopment, recent pastpreservation, and the creative interpretation of heritage sites.

Justin has a bachelor’s degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and a master of fine artsfrom the Savannah College of Art and Design. In addition to professional pursuits, he takes great interest in community-based initiatives through positions on boards and special committees. He is currently chair of the Frank Lloyd Wright World Heritage Council and serves on the board of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, the Iconic Houses International Advisory Committee, and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s Jack Heinz Advisory Board.

Stewards of an Icon: Louis Kahn’s Margaret Esherick House

Dan Macey

Historic preservation, especially of modern and mid-century structures, has been a passion of Dan Macey’s for the last decade. Together with his husband, Paul Savidge, he restored the Louis Kahn designed Margaret Esherick house in Philadelphia, a project for which they received numerous local and national preservation awards. Dan is a board member of the Philadelphia chapter of docomomo, an international organization dedicated to preserving modernist architecture. He co-chaired the national symposium of docomomo US when it was recently held in Philadelphia. Dan also serves on the executive board of the Chestnut Hill Conservancy and is a former board member of Manitoga/The Russel Wright Design Center.

Dan is an award-winning commercial food stylist preparing food and food scenes for television, cookbooks, packaging and in-store promotions. He has a strong interest in food culture and food writing. He is on the board of the Historic Foodways Society of the Delaware Valley and speaks often on food history topics. He has contributed to numerous food history books, including one that won a James Beard award. Dan’s article on the popularity of mutton in Regency England was nominated for an IACP award. He likes nothing more than combining his interests in architecture and food history and to whip up a mod, mid-century-inspired shindig.

Philip Johnson, David Whitney, and the Evolution of the Glass House Estate, 1946-2024

About the Lecture

"To me the whole experience of what’s been labeled now all over the world “the glass house” is a misnomer. To me, the house is a park. To me, the whole experience is a park in which there are, indeed, monuments or occasions or accidents or things by nature and things that I’ve placed there that create a place."

– Philip Johnson (1906-2005)

World-renowned architect Philip Johnson's words convey the undeniable importance of the fifty-acre estate he assembled and tweaked over fifty years in partnership with curator and plantsman David Whitney. This talk will consider the social, architectural and gardening history of the property, and its evolution from five untamed acres to a carefully contrived ideal landscape that is the setting – and the view -- for The Glass House and its orbiting playground of Modernist follies constructed between 1946 and 2005.

About the Speaker

Maureen Cassidy-Geiger is an internationally recognized curator, scholar and educator with special expertise in European decorative arts and the history of architecture, gardens and court culture. Formerly on the staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick Collection and Parsons School of Design, she has curated exhibitions in Europe and America and has published and lectured on a broad array of subjects, for amateurs and specialists alike. In 2021, she presented The Art of Architecture: Beaux-Arts Drawings from the Peter May Collection at New- York Historical Society, to accompany the publication of the two-volume catalogue Living with Architecture as Art: The Peter May Collection of Architectural Drawings, Models and Artefacts

(Paul Holberton Press).

Planning, Conservation, and Support: The GCI’s work at the Eames House in Los Angeles

About the Lecture

Since 2012, the Getty Conservation Institute has been providing conservation assistance to the Eames Foundation in Los Angeles to help support their stewardship of the house of Charles and Ray Eames. This iconic work of modern architecture, from 1949, was designed by two of the most influential American designers of the 20 th century and is now open to the public, serving as a testament to their lives and their work. From its inception, it was an innovative statement about what modernist residential architecture could be, using new and experimental materials, colors and textures, carefully sited to respond to the surrounding landscape. At 75 years of age, it suffers from wear and tear, deterioration of materials, and threats from external environmental factors. Working with the Eames Foundation coincided with the GCIs launch of its Conserving Modern Architecture Initiative (CMAI), a comprehensive program to support the practice of conserving modern heritage. The CMAI team has done archival research, scientific investigations and environmental studies to understand issues and future problems that may occur at the Eames House and solutions can be found. In 2018 the GCI completed a Conservation Management Plan for the Eames House, a far-reaching tool that gives the Eames Foundation a roadmap to guide their future work, a journey they have recently started. This lecture will talk about what lessons have been learned in the process of working on the Eames House that can be useful to others managing and protecting works of modern architecture, and how the conservation management plan has paid off for the Eames Foundation.

About the Speaker

Chandler McCoy AIA manages the Conserving Modern Architecture Initiative at the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles whose mission is to advance the practice of conserving modern heritage. This includes developing and delivering educational and training programs, managing field projects, and publishing technical books related to conserving modern heritage. He is one of the authors of the Eames House Conservation Management Plan. Prior to joining the GCI in 2015 he was Associate Director for Planning and Design at the Presidio Trust in San Francisco. He is a registered architect and received his BS in Architecture from the University of Virginia and Master of Architecture degree from Columbia University’s GSAPP in New York City. He holds a certificate in Architectural Conservation from ICCROM in Rome. He serves on the board of the Barnsdall Art Park Foundation in Los Angeles.

Host or Publisher Architecture Sarasota