Architecting Nature: Evolution of the Glass House Estate

Full Title: Architecting Nature: Philip Johnson, David Whitney and the evolution of the Glass House estate, 1946-2024

Thursday, March 20, 2025

6:00pm-7:00pm

McCulloch Pavilion, 265 S. Orange Ave

Parking available in the lots East of the Pavilion and South of Morrill Street

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).

PHOTO CREDITS:

Feature image #1: Photo by Maureen Cassidy-Geiger

Feature image #2: Photo by Pter Aaron

Feature images #3-4: Photos by Stacy Bass

Host or Publisher Architecture Sarasota