denny Architectural Art & Design

NOW? is an occasional series of conversations about ideas, images, words, things, drawings, places, designs. NOW? is also a specific temporal moment--of thought and action--caught between the present and possible futures. James Sloss Ackerman is the doyen of the international community of historians of Renaissance architecture. He is one of the scholars to have created the modern history of architecture, founded on a systematic approach and making use of a critical examination of all written and visual sources. His work has had a considerable influence on both historians of architecture and architects themselves. In his field, he has written two of the most important monographs of the century that has just closed, dedicated to Michelangelo and Andrea Palladio. Erika Naginski is Associate Professor of Architectural History. She is a historian of European art and architecture (17th to 19th centuries) whose research interests focus on Enlightenment aesthetics, theories of public space, cultural memory and historic preservation, and the critical traditions of art history. Mohsen Mostafavi, an architect and educator, is the Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design. 4/17/09