Building Culture: Designing Spaces for Art

The National Academy of Design invites you to a conversation between architect Annabelle Selldorf NA, sculptor Donna Dennis NA, and author Julian Rose to celebrate the publication of Rose’s new book about museum architecture, (Princeton Architectural Press, 2024). Building Culture gathers interviews with Selldorf and fifteen other celebrated architects about the design of art museums. In this event, Rose, Selldorf, and Dennis will explore the relationship between contemporary art and architecture, discussing the complex challenges faced by architects in creating spaces for art and by artists in taking on architecture as their medium or subject.

RESERVATIONS: Admission is free but reservations are required. The program will begin at 6:30 PM.

ACCESSIBILITY: This venue is fully accessible to wheelchairs. To request a free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation or CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) captioning service, email your request at least three weeks in advance of the event to [email protected].

About the Speakers

Annabelle Selldorf is the Principal of Selldorf Architects, a 70-person architectural design practice that she founded in New York City in 1988. The firm creates public and private spaces that manifest a clear and modern sensibility to enduring impact. Selldorf Architects has worked on public and private projects that range from museums and libraries to a recycling facility; and at scales from the construction of new buildings to the restoration of historic interiors and exhibition design.

The practice has a particular expertise in museum and art related spaces with cultural clients that include The Frick Collection, National Gallery London, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Luma Arles, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Gallery, Art Gallery of Ontario, the Clark Art Institute, and Neue Galerie New York. The firm has also created numerous galleries for David Zwirner, Hauser & Wirth, and Gladstone Gallery among others, and designed exhibitions for the Frick Madison, Whitney Museum, Frieze Masters, Gagosian Gallery, and the Venice Art Biennale.

Born and raised in Cologne, Germany, Selldorf received a Bachelor of Architecture from Pratt Institute and a Master of Architecture from Syracuse University. She is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and serves on the Board of the Architectural League of New York, the World Monuments Fund, the Chinati Foundation, and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, and has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Syracuse University. Additionally, Ms. Selldorf is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was the recipient of their prestigious Award in Architecture in 2014. In 2016, she received the AIA New York Medal of Honor. Annabelle Selldorf was elected to the National Academy of Design in 2012.

Donna Dennis NA, initially part of the architectural sculpture movement of the early 1970s, is best known for her complex sculptural installations with light and sound. Her subway-inspired Deep Station filled the lobby of the Brooklyn Museum in 1987. In 2007, the outdoor sculptures Tourist Cabins on Park Avenue, were exhibited on Park Avenue, NYC. In 2013, Coney Night Maze, a complex mixed-media installation with sound that drew inspiration from the maze of layered fences, gates, ramps, and barriers that nestled beneath the Cyclone roller coaster, was seen at the Neuberger Museum. In 2023, she exhibited Ship/Dock/Three Houses and the Night Sky, a room-filling installation in which projected video forms the backdrop for a massive construction, at Private Public Gallery in Hudson, NY.

Also in 2023, Monacelli Press published a full career monograph, Donna Dennis: Poet in Three Dimensions. In 2024, a solo show of her early work was presented at O’Flaherty’s on the Lower East Side in New York and Deep Station at The Ranch in Montauk, NY, as well as the release of Writing Toward Dawn: Selected Journals 1969-1982 by Bamberger Books.

Donna’s work is in prominent collections including the Brooklyn Museum, the Cleveland Art Museum, the Microsoft Collection, the Walker Art Center, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in Aachen, Germany, the Indianapolis Museum, the San Diego Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Neuberger Museum, and the Martin Z. Margulies Collection. Permanent public art commissions are located at John F. Kennedy Airport, P.S. 234, in Tribeca, Queens College, and at the Wonderland MBTA Station in Boston. Grants and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, several National Endowment Fellowships, and Pollock-Krasner Foundation grants. In recent years, she received the prestigious Artists’ Legacy Foundation Award, the Merit Award in Sculpture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Anonymous Was a Woman Award.

She was elected to the National Academy in 2010 and is Professor Emerita at Purchase College, SUNY. She lives and works in Clermont, NY.

Julian Rose is a historian and critic of art and architecture. From 2012 to 2018, he was a senior editor at Artforum, and he regularly contributes to a wide range of publications including Aperture, Architectural Review, Artforum, Bookforum, Log, Perspecta, and October. His work as a cofounder of the award winning design studio Formlessfinder has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Museum of Modern Art, the Chicago Architecture Biennial, and the Venice Biennale of Architecture. Rose received a BA in the history of art and architecture from Harvard University and an MArch from Princeton University, and he has taught architectural design and history at Columbia University and Princeton. He is currently completing a PhD at Princeton on the origin and evolution of museums of contemporary art.

Image: Cover of Building Culture.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

National Academy of Design, 519 West 26th Street, New York, United States