Ada Louise Huxtable and Richard Meier, c. Getty Museum
"Ada Louise Huxtable (1921–2013) was one of the most powerful voices in architecture in the latter half of the twentieth century. As architecture critic of The New York Times in the 1960s and ’70s, she carried enormous weight, securing or sinking many an architectural reputation, christening or thwarting many a project, and shaping the tastes and values of the public throughout the United States. She was the first woman named to the jury of experts for the distinguished Pritzker Architecture Prize, on which she served from 1987 to 2005. Her thunderous prose resonated loudly through the cavernous canyons of New York City: crisp, hard-hitting, but elegant, lucid prose that stirred admiration, contempt, and sometimes just plain awareness of buildings she thought significant." -- Meredith Clausen, "Pioneering Woman of American Architecture"
Maristella Casciato (architect and architectural historian) is Senior Curator of Architectural Collections at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. In six years at the GRI she curated Bauhaus Beginnings (2019), celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the school, and supervised major acquisitions, such as Frank Gehry Papers from 1954 to 1988. From 2012 to 2015 she was Associate Director of Research at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. Her scholarly studies focus on the history and theory of 20th-century architecture. Among her forthcoming publications is the facsimile edition of Le Corbusier’s “Album Punjab” (2022), for which she received a Graham Foundation grant.
Meredith Clausen is professor of architectural history at the University of Washington, teaching mainly 20th century architecture for some 40 years. Over the course of her career, she has addressed a wide variety of subjects: the Samaritaine Department Store, the first steel-frame building to be built in Paris during the first decade of the 20th century, and department stores and shopping centers across the nation; Pietro Belluschi and the Pan Am (now MetLife) Building in New York; and Craig Ellwood and the Pasadena Art Center in Southern California. Her work has included books or articles on sacred spaces, women in the architectural profession, Le Corbusier and the Emergence of Modernism, and, most recently, architectural criticism and Ada Louise Huxtable. She is currently teaching a regular course on "Paris: Architecture and Urbanism," as well as writing an article on I.M. Pei's Pyramide in the Louvre.
Edward Nilsson is an architect in Marblehead, MA, and long-time friend of Ada Louise Huxtable. He holds a MArch from Harvard University GSD, a BArch from The Cooper Union, and an MBA from Babson College. His research topics include No Place Like Home – Ada Louise Huxtable’s Ranch House as her Housing Ideal, and for Historic Salem, Inc. In 2015 Ed initiated the symposium Mightier Than a Wrecking Ball: How Ada Louise Huxtable Saved Salem, hosted by the Peabody Essex Museum. Ed contributed a chapter in the recently published book Urban Modernity in the Contemporary Gulf entitled History, Memory and Narrative of the Past and Future regarding his work in Kuwait with The Architects Collaborative (TAC). He is a former instructor in architectural history and case studies at Boston Architectural College.