2015-16 season profile
Transcription
2015-16 season profile
Preservation Foundation { Season Profile 2015-2016 } Of Palm Beach Executive Committee F o u n dat i o n S ta f f John D. Mashek, Jr. Alexander C. Ives CHAIRMAN PRESIDENT L. Frank Chopin, Esquire SECRETARY ARCHIVES AND PROGRAMMING Scott Moses Ambassador Edward E. Elson DIRECTOR TREASURER BOOKKEEPING AND FINANCIAL CONTROL Mr. Larry B. “Ben” Alexander, Jr. Mr. Rand V. Araskog Susan Morin DIRECTOR Mrs. Robert M. Grace Mrs. Howard J. Kessler EDUCATION Amanda Herrick Skier Mrs. Talbott B. Maxey DIRECTOR Mr. David G. Ober Lynne K. Charter Mrs. William H. Pitt ASSOCIATE EDUCATOR Sharon Bouyoucas Mr. Daniel E. Ponton ASSOCIATE EDUCATOR Mr. John H. Schuler GARDENS Daniele Garson B oa r d o f T r u s t e e s Mrs. John W. Annan Mr. and Mrs. Howard J. Kessler Mrs. Nathan Appleman Mrs. Terry Allen Kramer Mr. and Mrs. Rand V. Araskog Mr. Leonard A. Lauder Mr. Larry B. “Ben” Alexander, Jr. Mrs. Joseph W. Luter III Mr. James D. Berwind Mrs. David J. Mahoney Mr. and Mrs. Alan D. Bleznak Mr. and Mrs. William H. Mann Mrs. T. Dennie Boardman Mr. John D. Mashek, Jr. Mrs. Michael C. Bowen Mrs. Talbott B. Maxey Mrs. Edwin M. Burke Mr. and Mrs. Dudley L. Moore, Jr. L. Frank Chopin, Esquire Mrs. Danielle Hickox Moore Mrs. Edward W. Cook Mr. David Ober Mr. and Mrs. Marvin H. Davidson Mrs. William G. Pannill Mrs. F. Eugene Dixon, Jr. Mrs. Sallie B. Phillips Mrs. John J. Dowdle Mrs. William H. Pitt Mr. and Mrs. E. Llwyd Ecclestone Mr. Daniel E. Ponton Ambassador and Mrs. Edward E. Elson Mr. Thomas C. Quick Mrs. Max M. Fisher Mr. and Mrs. William D. Rollnick Mrs. Henry Ford II Mrs. William D. Roosevelt Mr. and Mrs. Mark E. Freitas Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur L. Ross, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Robert M. Grace Mr. Jorge A. Sanchez Mrs. Martin D. Gruss Mrs. Francis G. Scaife Mrs. J. Ira Harris Mr. and Mrs. John H. Schuler Mr. James Held Mr. Jeffery W. Smith Dr. Peter N. Heydon The Honorable Lesly S. Smith Mrs. Philip Huiltar Mr. Scott A. Snyder Mr. and Mrs. Charles B. Johnson Mrs. Robert L. Sterling, Jr. Mr. And Mrs. Gerald R. Jordan, Jr. Mrs. T. Suffern Tailer Mr. Kenn Karakul A dv i s o r y T r u s t e e Mrs. Warrington Gillet, Jr. DIRECTOR OPERATIONS Joan Brewer DIRECTOR SPECIAL EVENTS Sharon Kearns DIRECTOR TEAM SUPPORT Kristin Aiello DIRECTOR The Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach is a private, non-profit membership organization dedicated to the preservation of the historic, architectural and cultural heritage of Palm Beach, Florida. As the advocate for maintaining the outstanding quality of life in Palm Beach, the Foundation has created a community-wide perspective seeing the unique buildings of Palm Beach as integral to the Townís character as well as its future. What once would have been only issues of growth have been reshaped as issues of quality of life. By combining history, inventiveness and ingenuity the Preservation Foundation has helped forge a contemporary Palm Beach informed by its achievements in architecture, culture and design, not dismissive of them. Over 30 years, the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach has given millions of dollars for the preservation and restoration of historic properties; worked advocating for over 300 landmark properties; recognized numerous architects, owners, and properties with awards; educated hundreds of thousands of children about the architectural, cultural and environmental legacy of Palm Beach; and saved thousands of archival documents in its library, among many other accomplishments. { Ta b l e o f C o n t e n t s } Lecture Series ...........................................page 4 Exhibit Series ............................................page 46 Film Nights ...............................................page 52 Garden Classes .........................................page 92 Musicale Series ........................................page 98 Calendar of Events ................................page 102 Space is limited for all events, so please call 561.832.0731 to RSVP Lecture Series Presenting Sponsor for Lecture Series unless otherwise noted 2 Season Profile 2015-2016 3 4 Season Profile Friday, November 25, 2015 6pm BOOK SIGNING/COCKTAIL RECEPTION: 40 Years of Fabulous: The Kips Bay Decorator Show House by Steven Stolman 311 Peruvian Avenue Invitation Only For more than four decades, the Kips Bay Decorator Show House has presented the creations of a stellar roster of interior designers in what is regarded as one of the finest decorator show houses in the world. A fixture on the New York City scene, this glittering expression of high design continues to set the standard for the world of decor. Forty Years of Fabulous provides an insider’s look at the history of this muchloved convention of society while revisiting the spectacular rooms by star decorators past and present rooms that truly defined interior design while setting trends still evident in today’s homes. Steven Stolman is the author of Scalamandré: Haute Décor. He divides his time among homes in Palm Beach, New York and Milwaukee. Cocktail attire is requested. Drinks and light hors d’oeuvres will be served. Special thanks to 2015-2016 5 6 Season Profile Thursday, January 7, 2016 2pm LECTURE/BOOK SIGNING: The Age of Empire - Britain’s Imperial Architecture From 1880 to 1930 by Clive Aslet 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members Five years after discussing the matter with her private secretary, in 1877 Queen Victoria became Empress of India. This symbolic event was followed by the transformation of Britain into the seat of self-consciously imperial power. Britain’s industrial and imperial might financed an architectural golden age, which saw the Dickensian rookeries replaced with model housing; civic life improved through new town halls, bath houses and libraries; God glorified in new churches and cathedrals; Mammon pursued in banks, exchanges and commercial buildings; and the Empire celebrated in numerous sculptural projects around the globe. Through stunning images this book reveals the national confidence and prosperity that led to a new-found grandeur and scale in the architecture commissioned. The Age of Empire is a lavishly illustrated celebration of the architectural legacy of the British Empire and its ability to create buildings that remain as awe-inspiring as when they were first built. Clive Aslet is an award-winning writer and journalist, and an acknowledged authority on British architecture. He is the author of many books, including An Exuberant Catalogue of Dreams: The Americans Who Revived the Country House in Britain, The English House, Landmarks of Britain and Villages of Britain. Presenting Sponsor 2015-2016 7 8 Season Profile Thursday, January 14, 2016 2pm LECTURE: Tony Sabatino on ‘The Restoration of Mizner Memorial Fountain’ Free to members - $20 non-members This past summer restoration of the Mizner Memorial Fountain was completed. The project had long been supported by the Preservation Foundation. The Foundation generated the initial interest to make restoring Mizner Memorial Fountain a priority, then followed-up on that by facilitating over half a million dollars for its restoration through our own fundraising and working for state grant money in Tallahassee. Tony Sabatino, Burkhardt Construction’s project manager for the Memorial Fountain restoration project, will explain how the fountain was restored. The restoration removed heavily-damaged sections of the over 80 year-old Addison Mizner Memorial Fountain and remolded them in clay. Cast molds of features as well as repair to equipment and plumbing also were done. Arguably one of the most beloved of Palm Beach’s structures and an important part of Palm Beach’s history, the Addison Mizner Memorial Fountain sits in the center of the Town of Palm Beach’s historic Town Hall Square district, just north of Town Hall. The Preservation Foundation has long been involved in this square, financing the 1989 and 2009 renovations to Town Hall and working to landmark the square as a district in 1989. The fountain was originally a gift from winter residents and local businesses to the Town of Palm Beach in honor of those who had helped make the town, specifically Henry M. Flagler and Elisha N. Dimick. In 1929, Mizner donated his services free of charge for the fountain project. It was dedicated to the town in 1930. Presenting Sponsor 2015-2016 9 10 Season Profile Thursday, January 21, 2016 2pm LECTURE/BOOK SIGNING: World Monuments - 50 Irreplaceable Sites to Discover and Champion by George H. McNeely 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members In commemoration of its golden anniversary, the World Monuments Fund (WMF) has commissioned this book to give voice to the organization’s work around the world over the past 50 years in light of some of the most pressing issues in heritage preservation today. From Venice and Petra to New Orleans and Angkor, from Easter Island and the Tempel Synagogue in Krakow, Poland, to the Mughal gardens of Agra, India, and the Chancellerie d’Orléans in Paris, the book presents 50 of the world’s most compelling destinations, cultural heritage sites, and significant architectural works that must be seen and preserved. The striking photographs in the volume were selected by the International Center of Photography, and feature renowned photographers including Edward Burtynsky, Tiina Itkonen, Erich Lessing, Gideon Mendel, and Sebastião Salgado. George H. McNeely joined the World Monuments Fund in 2013 as the Vice President for Strategic & International Affairs. Previously, he had been with Christie’s for 15 years, most recently as a Senior Vice President in the Chairman’s Office. He managed Christie’s regional offices in North and South America and was an active member of the firm’s business and client development efforts. Prior to joining Christie’s, he was the Director of Institutional Giving at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and also in management consulting. He has served as a charity auctioneer for hundreds of charity events throughout the United States. He received his B.A. in art history from Princeton University and his M.B.A. from Columbia University. Presenting Sponsor 2015-2016 11 12 Season Profile Friday, January 29, 2016 2pm LECTURE/BOOK SIGNING: The Other Paris by Luc Sante 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members Paris, the City of Light, the city of fine dining and seductive couture and intellectual hauteur, was until fairly recently always accompanied by its shadow: the city of the bohemian, the outcast, the criminal, the eccentric, the willfully nonconforming. In The Other Paris, Luc Sante gives us a panoramic view of that second metropolis, which has nearly vanished but whose traces are in the bricks and stones of the contemporary city, in the culture of France itself, and, by extension, throughout the world. Drawing on testimony from a great range of witnesses - from Balzac and Hugo to assorted boulevardiers, rabble-rousers, and tramps - Sante, whose thorough research is matched only by the vividness of his narration, takes the reader on a whirlwind tour. Luc Sante was born in Verviers, Belgium. His other books include Low Life, Evidence, The Factory of Facts, and Kill All Your Darlings. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Grammy (for album notes), an Infinity Award for Writing from the International Center of Photography, and Guggenheim and Cullman fellowships. He has contributed to The New York Review of Books since 1981, and has written for many other magazines. “This brilliant, beautifully written essay is the finest book I have ever read about Paris. Ever. Thank you, Luc Sante.” - Paul Auster “All who love Paris will love this book.” - Kirkus Reviews “Hanging over The Other Paris is the contemporary curse that perhaps hit Paris first, of cities that have become bland transnational stopping places for the privileged. Magisterial as ever, Sante returns us to the flavor, texture, savor, shouts, and clashes of the bygone city.” - Rebecca Solnit Presenting Sponsor 2015-2016 13 14 Season Profile Thursday, February 4, 2016 2pm LECTURE/BOOK SIGNING: City on a Grid: How New York Became New York by Gerard Koeppel 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members You either love it or hate it, but nothing says New York like the street grid of Manhattan. Created in 1811 by a three-man commission featuring headstrong Founding Father Gouverneur Morris, the plan called for a dozen parallel avenues crossing at right angles with many dozens of parallel streets in an unbroken grid. No other grid in Western civilization was so large and uniform as the one ordained in 1811. The Manhattan grid has been called “a disaster” of urban planning and “the most courageous act of prediction in Western civilization.” However one feels about it, the most famous urban design of a living city defines its daily life. This is its story. Gerard Koeppel is the author of Bond of Union: Building the Erie Canal and the American Empire and Water for Gotham: A History. He has contributed to numerous other books, including the Encyclopedia of New York City, of which he was an associate editor. Before writing mostly about the past, he wrote, edited, and produced the present at CBS News. He was born on the grid and has lived all over it since. “For Manhattanites, surely, and for anyone who’s visited and been either charmed or overwhelmed by the grid.” - Kirkus Reviews “Readers curious about the growth of infrastructure in large city centers will definitely be interested in Koeppel’s take.” - Library Journal “Indispensable for anyone interested in the history of New York and cities generally, and bound to fuel cocktail conversations up, down, and across the city for years to come.” - David Duchovny Presenting Sponsor 2015-2016 15 16 Season Profile Thursday, February 11, 2016 2pm LECTURE/BOOK SIGNING: The Walk to/from Elsie’s by Hutton Wilkinson and Flynn Kuhnhert 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members “Interior design as a profession was invented by Elsie de Wolfe,” said The New Yorker. Using the format of a pair of limited-edition historical novels, authors Hutton Wilkinson and Flynn Kuhnert share for the first time inside knowledge of Elsie de Wolfe, who had entrusted her life secrets to designer Tony Duquette. They tell of a woman who was not born rich or beautiful but made herself both. Running from Europe and the Nazis to Hollywood, she meets Tony Duquette who is fleeing from his father’s financial ruin in the Midwest. Inevitably, the two stars collide to form their own galaxy. This Auntie Mame tale carries the reader on a lavish adventure across the United States and Europe, between the years 1932 and 1951, as young Tony becomes Elsie de Wolfe’s last great protégé. Hutton Wilkinson is a co-author of Tony Duquette and author of More is More, as well as Tony Duquette*Hutton Wilkinson: Jewelry. He is Creative Director and CEO of Tony Duquette, Inc., where he presides over the important jewelry and interior design house begun by Tony Duquette in 1941. Mr. Wilkinson is also president of the Anthony and Elizabeth Duquette Foundation for the Living Arts, and the president of the Elsie de Wolfe Foundation, as well as having served as a director of the international board of Save Venice, Inc. for 25 years. Recently Hutton Wilkinson was recognized by His Majesty, King Juan Carlos of Spain as the hereditary Fourth Count of Alastaya. Hutton and his wife Ruth live in Beverly Hills, California. Flynn Kuhnert has taught 19th & 20th century dramatic literature at Harvard College and served as a Visiting Professor at Duke. He has directed & designed 35 theatre & opera productions in America and the Netherlands, as well as having served on the international board of directors of Save Venice, Inc. for almost a decade. In 2013, he created & presented The Kuhnert Chronicles for the Ovation Television Network: analyzing art, architecture, theatre and literature. He lives in Bel Air, California. Presenting Sponsor 2015-2016 17 18 Season Profile Thursday, February 18, 2016 2pm LECTURE: Tom Mayes on ‘Why Do Old Places Matter?’ Free to members - $20 non-members Tom Mayes, deputy general counsel for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, has specialized in both corporate and preservation law since he joined the organization in 1986. He is the principal lawyer for legal matters relating to historic property real estate transactions and for the National Trust’s 29 historic sites. Mayes has developed special expertise in architectural and technical preservation issues, preservation easements, the Americans with Disabilities Act and historic shipwrecks. He is the author of several articles relating to, and has lectured widely on, preservation easements, shipwreck protection, the Americans with Disabilities Act and preservation public policy. For several years, Mayes has taught historic preservation law at the University of Maryland Graduate Program in Historic Preservation. Mayes received his B.A. with honors in History in 1981 and his J.D. in 1985 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Mayes received an M.A. in Writing from Johns Hopkins University. When he is not working on legal complexities, Mayes has been considering the role historic places play in everyday life. This sent Mayes to Rome on a six-month tour of discovery where he sought to answer the question: Why Do Old Places Matter? Presenting Sponsor 2015-2016 19 20 Season Profile Friday, February 19, 2016 2pm LECTURE: James Corner on ‘The High Line and Landscape Architecture’ Free to members - $20 non-members James Corner is a landscape architect and theorist whose works exhibit a focus on “developing innovative approaches toward landscape architectural design and urbanism.” His designs of note include Fresh Kills Park on Staten Island and the High Line in Manhattan, both in New York City. Corner is a professionally registered landscape architect and the principal of James Corner Field Operations, a landscape architecture and urban design practice based in New York City. Corner’s practice, Field Operations, was initially formed in collaboration with architect Stan Allen, but the partners chose to focus on their individual practices in 2005. The firm is at the forefront of the landscape urbanism movement, an interdisciplinary approach that, in theory, amalgamates a wide range of disciplines including landscape architecture, urban design, landscape ecology, and engineering, among other subjects. Corner argues that it is an approach that focuses on process rather than a style and that it marks a productive attitude toward indeterminacy, open-endedness, intermixing, and cross-disciplinarity. Corner’s designs bring back the open spaces of the natural wild with a rough, natural, and ecologically sound approach; this could be compared to the works of Frederick Law Olmsted, except more unbridled. Presenting Sponsor 2015-2016 21 22 Season Profile Thursday, February 25, 2016 2pm LECTURE: Toshiko Mori on ‘Saving Japanese Modern Architecture’ Free to members - $20 non-members Toshiko Mori is a Japanese architect and the founder and principal of New York-based Toshiko Mori Architect, PLLC and Vision Arc. She is also the Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. In 1995, she became the first female faculty member to receive tenure at the GSD. Mori is known for her “concern with material innovation and conceptual clarity.” Her projects include the A.R.T. New York theater, the canopy at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Pembroke Hall at Brown University, exhibit design at MoMA and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and numerous residential projects in the United States, Taiwan, China, and Austria. Concerned with the destruction of modernist structures in Japan, Mori has teamed with Tomas Maier of Bottega Veneta to help build awareness. She recently told Architectural Digest, “the thing to keep in mind is this: Japan is a really old place with a lot of respect for old buildings. At the same time, because of the fast economic cycles, there is an obsession with novelty. Sixties buildings are fairly new but not new enough, not fashionable enough. They’re victims of neglect because they’re not traditional historic buildings but they’re not sufficiently new to claim continuous economic power.” Presenting Sponsor 2015-2016 23 24 Season Profile Thursday, March 10, 2016 2pm LECTURE/BOOK SIGNING: A Natural History of English Gardening: 1650–1800 by Mark Laird 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members Inspired by the pioneering naturalist Gilbert White, who viewed natural history as the common study of cultural and natural communities, Mark Laird unearths forgotten historical data to reveal the complex visual cultures of early modern gardening. Ranging from climate studies to the study of a butterfly’s life cycle, this original and fascinating book examines the scientific quest for order in nature as an offshoot of ordering the garden and field. Laird follows a broad series of chronological events - from the Little Ice Age winter of 1683 to the drought summer of the volcanic 1783 - to probe the nature of gardening and husbandry, the role of amateurs in scientific disciplines, and the contribution of women as gardener-naturalists. Illustrated by a stunning wealth of visual and literary materials - paintings, engravings, poetry, essays, and letters, as well as prosaic household accounts and nursery bills - Laird fundamentally transforms our understanding of the English landscape garden as a powerful cultural expression. Mark Laird is Senior Lecturer in Landscape Architectural History at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. He teaches early modern landscape history and a seminar on plants and animals in the history of landscape design. Based in Toronto as a consultant in historic landscape preservation, he advises on sites in Europe and North America. “Filled with stunning visuals, from watercolors of wildflowers to the narcissus and thistles stitched on a satin petticoat worn to the Prince of Wales’s ball in 1741.” – Vogue “Mark Laird, the great landscape historian, gives a superb narrative about the plants, events, people and studies that form the backdrop of English gardening, from John Evelyn to Gilbert White. Exquisite contemporary illustrations support his prose.” Financial Times Presenting Sponsor 2015-2016 25 26 Season Profile Friday, March 11, 2016 2pm LECTURE/BOOK SIGNING: Open City by Teju Cole 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members Teju Cole is a writer, photographer, and art historian based in Lagos and Brooklyn. His book Open City was named a Best Book on more than twenty end-of-the-year lists by: The New Yorker • New York Times • The Atlantic • Time • The Economist • Newsweek/The Daily Beast • The New Republic • New York Daily News • NPR • Los Angeles Times • The Boston Globe • The Seattle Times • Minneapolis Star Tribune • GQ • Salon • Slate • New York magazine • The Week • The Kansas City Star • Kirkus Reviews Teju Cole will discuss his theory of the city as palimpsest; of the multiple histories, identities and narratives that layer atop of each other in any single place. Open City is a haunting tale about identity, dislocation, and history. Along the streets of Manhattan, a young Nigerian doctor named Julius wanders, reflecting on his relationships, his recent breakup with his girlfriend, his present, his past. He encounters people from different cultures and classes who will provide insight on his journey - which takes him to Brussels, to the Nigeria of his youth, and into the most unrecognizable facets of his own soul. Presenting Sponsor 2015-2016 27 28 Season Profile Thursday, March 17, 2016 2pm LECTURE/BOOK SIGNING: Goldeneye - Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming’s Jamaica by Matthew Parker 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members For two months every year, from 1946 to his death eighteen years later, Ian Fleming lived at Goldeneye, the house he built on a point of high land overlooking a small white sand beach on Jamaica’s stunning north coast. All the James Bond novels and stories were written here. This book explores the huge influence of that house and Jamaica on the creation of Fleming’s iconic post-war hero. The island was for Fleming part retreat from the world, part tangible representation of his own values, and part exotic fantasy. Goldeneye also compares the real Jamaica of the 1950s during the build-up to independence with the island’s portrayal in the Bond books, to shine a light on the attitude of the likes of Fleming and Coward to the dramatic end of the British Empire. Matthew Parker is the author of three previous non-fiction books, Monte Cassino: The Hardest-Fought Battle of World War II; Panama Fever, which was one of the Washington Post’s Best Books of the Year; and The Sugar Barons, which was an Economist Book of the Year. He lives in England. “The first book to explore the north-shore estate where the author and former intelligence officer Ian Fleming spent two months each year and wrote all the Bond books. The purchase of his tropical lair, the retreat from society, the way Fleming spent the latter half of his life there - these are all apparently telltale signs of a man who just can’t handle getting older. What Parker’’s new book shows is how much that crisis latched itself onto James Bond, and how the defiant fantasy he provided against decline both restored Fleming and gave life to an immortal franchise.” - The Atlantic Presenting Sponsor 2015-2016 29 30 Season Profile Friday, March 18, 2016 2pm LECTURE/BOOK SIGNING: Berlin - Portrait of a City Through the Centuries by Rory MacLean 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members Berlin is a city of fragments and ghosts, a laboratory of ideas, the fount of both the brightest and darkest designs of history’s most bloody century. The once arrogant capital of Europe was devastated by Allied bombs, divided by a Wall, then reunited and reborn as one of the creative centers of the world. Today it resonates with the echo of lives lived, dreams realized and evils executed. No other city has repeatedly been so powerful, and fallen so low; few other cities have been so shaped and defined by individual imaginations. Rory MacLean assembles a dazzlingly eclectic cast of Berliners over five centuries, from the wild medieval balladeer to the ambitious prostitute who refashioned herself as a royal princess, from the Scottish mercenary who fought for the Prussian Army to the fearful Communist Party functionary who helped to build the Wall. Alongside them we encounter Marlene Dietrich flaunting her sexuality in The Blue Angel, Goebbels concocting Nazi iconography, Hitler fantasizing about the mega-city Germania and David Bowie recording ‘Heroes’. Through these vivid portraits, Rory MacLean masterfully evokes the seen and the unseen, in a richly varied, unexpected tour of Berlin. The result is a unique biography of one of the world’s most volatile and creative cities. “Berlin is the most extraordinary work of history I’ve ever read. To call it history is, in fact, reductive. There’s some historical analysis, quite a lot of fiction, some philosophizing, lashings of wit and a fair dose of invective. It’s a work of imagination, reflection, reverence, perplexity and criticism that reveals as much about the author’s precocious mind as it does about the city he adores.” - Washington Post Presenting Sponsor 2015-2016 31 32 Season Profile Friday, March 25, 2016 2pm GRUSS MASTER LECTURE: Jacques Grange The Colony Hotel Free to members - $20 non-members Jacques Grange is a world-renowned French interior designer. After completing his training at the École Boulle and the École Camondo, Grange made a career as a decorator in France and abroad from the 1970s. His main customers included Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, for whom he decorated the Château Gabriel, in Benerville-sur-Mer, in the style of Proust’s Á la Recherche du Temps Perdu. His usual customers include Isabelle Adjani, Princess Caroline of Monaco, Alain Ducasse, François Pinault, Robert Agostinelli, Valentino, and Karl Lagerfeld. In New York, he provided the decoration of Paloma Picasso’s jewelry shop, of the Mark Hotel on Madison Avenue, and of the Barbizon Hotel. In 2014 he received Trophee des Arts from the French Institute Alliance Francaise. The award distinguishes an artist who exemplifies FIAF’s mission of French-American friendship and cross-cultural exchange. It has been bestowed upon French and American artists and cultural icons, including Alain Ducasse, Marc Jacobs, Christian Lacroix or Francois Cluzet. This lecture would not happen where it not for the vision and support of Audrey and Martin Gruss. 2015-2016 33 34 Season Profile Thursday, March 31, 2016 2pm LECTURE/BOOK SIGNING: Building Art – The Life and Work of Frank Gehry by Paul Goldberger 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members From Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic Paul Goldberger: an engaging, nuanced exploration of the life and work of Frank Gehry, undoubtedly the most famous architect of our time. This first full-fledged critical biography presents and evaluates the work of a man who has almost single-handedly transformed contemporary architecture in his innovative use of materials, design, and form, and who is among the very few architects in history to be both respected by critics as a creative, cutting-edge force and embraced by the general public as a popular figure. Building Art shows the full range of Gehry’s work, from early houses constructed of plywood and chain-link fencing to lamps made in the shape of fish to the triumphant success of such late projects as the spectacular art museum of glass in Paris. It tells the story behind Gehry’s own house, which upset his neighbors and excited the world with its mix of the traditional and the extraordinary, and recounts how Gehry came to design the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, his remarkable structure of swirling titanium that changed a declining city into a destination spot. Building Art also explains Gehry’s sixteen-year quest to complete Walt Disney Concert Hall, the beautiful, acoustically brilliant home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. At once a sweeping view of a great architect and an intimate look at creative genius, Building Art is in many ways the saga of the architectural milieu of the twenty-first century. But most of all it is the compelling story of the man who first comes to mind when we think of the lasting possibilities of buildings as art. “An enthralling story . . . more gripping than any novel . . . Gives a deep insight into the life of a revolutionary architect and modern architecture.” - The Washington Post Book Review Presenting Sponsor 2015-2016 35 36 Season Profile Friday, April 8, 2016 2pm LECTURE: Rosamund Bartlett on ‘Psychology of a City - The Architecture of St. Petersburg’ Free to members - $20 non-members St. Petersburg’s dignity and grandeur is everywhere apparent. Peter the Great had before him a vast tabula rasa when planning his future capital at the beginning of the 18th century. The city he built was truly sumptuous but it came at a price. This lecture tells the story of the buildings of St. Petersburg, but also the life that went on inside the buildings, focusing particularly on the city’s writers, musicians and artists, for whom St. Petersburg had a personality – sometimes enigmatic, sometimes tragic which they immortalized in their paintings, music and literary works. Rosamund Bartlett is a writer, scholar and translator who has lectured on Russian and European cultural history at universities, museums, and public institutions around the world. She has held senior university posts in Russian, Music and History, and was most recently a Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow in the Department of History and Civilization at the European University Institute in Fiesole. She is a Fellow of the European Humanities Research Centre at the University of Oxford, Visiting Professor at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance, and Honorary Associate in the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sydney. Her latest book, Tolstoy: A Russian Life, was published in 2010, and was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. In addition to contributing to the authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and The Cambridge History of Russia, she has written articles for leading scholarly journals and worked extensively as a translator: her Chekhov anthology About Love and Other Stories was shortlisted for the Weidenfeld Translation Prize. She also edited and translated the first unexpurgated edition of Chekhov’s letters for Penguin Classics. Her new translation of Anna Karenina for Oxford World’s Classics was published in autumn 2014. Presenting Sponsor 2015-2016 37 38 Season Profile Thursday, April 14, 2016 2pm LECTURE: Monica Ponce de Leon, the new dean of Princeton’s School of Architecture The Colony Hotel Free to members - $20 non-members Monica Ponce de Leon, a pioneering educator and award-winning architect, has recently been named the new dean of Princeton University’s School of Architecture. A recipient of the prestigious National Design Award in Architecture from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian National Design Museum, Ponce de Leon co-founded Office dA, in 1991, and in 2011 started her own design practice, MPdL Studio, with offices in New York, Boston and Ann Arbor. Ponce de Leon has served as dean of the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor since 2008, where she is also the Eliel Saarinen Collegiate Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning. Before her appointment at the University of Michigan, Ponce de Leon was a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she served on the faculty for 12 years. Among her many prestigious honors, Ponce de Leon has received the Academic Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the USA Target Fellow in Architecture and Design from United States Artists; and the Young Architects and Emerging Voices awards from the Architectural League of New York. She is widely recognized as a leader in the application of robotic technology to building fabrication. Building upon her work as director of the Digital Lab at Harvard, at the University of Michigan she developed a state of the art student-run digital fabrication lab, integrating digital fabrication into the curriculum of the school. In large part because of her pioneering work, the use of digital tools is now commonplace in architecture schools across the country. Presenting Sponsor 2015-2016 39 40 Season Profile Friday, April 15, 2016 2pm LECTURE/BOOK SIGNING: Michael Hoffman on Joseph Roth’s The Hotel Years 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members Joseph Roth (1894-1939) was the great elegist of the cosmopolitan culture that flourished in the dying days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Through his work he preserved in word a world lost. He published several books and articles before his untimely death at the age of 44. Roth’s writing has been admired by J. M. Coetzee, Jeffrey Eugenides, Elie Wiesel, and Nadine Gordimer, among many others. The Hotel Years gathers sixty-four of his feuilletons: on hotels; pains and pleasures; personalities; and the deteriorating international situation of the 1930s. Never before translated into English, these pieces begin in Vienna just at the end of the First World War, and end in Paris near the outbreak of the Second World War. Acclaimed poet Michael Hofmann is considered one of the greatest living experts on Joseph Roth. For his translations he has won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Dublin International IMPAC Award, the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize, the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize, the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, and The Schlegel-Tieck Prize (four times). He is the highly acclaimed translator of, among others, Kafka, Brecht, and Joseph Roth. “Reading the 64 essays by Joseph Roth anthologized in The Hotel Years - dazzling, elegiac, mordant and harrowingly oracular by turn - is like roaming through the Grand Budapest Hotel.” - New York Times “Roth spent so much time living in hotels that he declared himself “a hotel citizen, a hotel patriot”. Highlights include his portraits of the staff of an unnamed European hotel in 1929, transporting the reader to a now vanished world.” - The Independent Presenting Sponsor 2015-2016 41 42 Season Profile Thursday, April 21, 2016 2pm LECTURE/BOOK SIGNING: The Future of Architecture in 100 Buildings by Marc Kushner 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members Marc Kushner, the founder of Architizer.com and co-founder of the architectural firm HWKN draws on his unique position at the crossroads of architecture and social media to highlight 100 important buildings that embody the future of architecture. We are asking more of architecture than ever before; the response will define our future. A pavilion made from paper. A building that eats smog. An inflatable concert hall. A research lab that can walk through snow. We’re entering a new age in architecture one where we expect our buildings to deliver far more than just shelter. We want buildings that inspire us while helping the environment; buildings that delight our senses while serving the needs of a community; buildings made possible both by new technology and repurposed materials. Like an architectural cabinet of wonders, this book collects the most innovative buildings of today and tomorrow. The buildings hail from all seven continents (to say nothing of other planets), offering a truly global perspective on what lies ahead. Each page captures the soaring confidence, the thoughtful intelligence, the space-age wonder, and at times the sheer whimsy of the world’s most inspired buildings—and the questions they provoke: Can a building breathe? Can a skyscraper be built in a day? Can we 3D-print a house? Can we live on the moon? Filled with gorgeous imagery and witty insight, this book is an essential and delightful guide to the future being built around us—a future that matters more, and to more of us, than ever. Presenting Sponsor 2015-2016 43 44 Season Profile Thursday, April 28, 2016 2pm LECTURE/BOOK SIGNING: The Invention of Nature - Alexander von Humboldt’s New World by Andrea Wulf 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members The Invention of Nature reveals the extraordinary life of the visionary German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) and how he created the way we understand horticulture and nature today. Though almost forgotten today, his name lingers everywhere from the Humboldt Current to the Humboldt penguin. Humboldt was an intrepid explorer and the most famous scientist of his age. His restless life was packed with adventure and discovery, whether climbing the highest volcanoes in the world, paddling down the Orinoco or racing through anthrax–infested Siberia. Perceiving nature as an interconnected global force, Humboldt discovered similarities between climate zones across the world. He turned scientific observation into poetic narrative, and his writings inspired naturalists and poets such as Darwin, Wordsworth and Goethe but also politicians such as Jefferson. In The Invention of Nature author Wulf traces Humboldt’s influences through the great minds he inspired in revolution, evolution, ecology, conservation, art and literature and brings this forgotten father of environmentalism back to life. The Invention of Nature has been named one of Publisher Weekly’s Best Books of 2015, is a finalist of the Kirkus Book Prize 2015 and longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction & Nonfiction. Andrea Wulf was born in India and moved to Germany as a child. She lives in Britain where she trained as a design historian at the Royal College of Art. She is the author of The Brother Gardeners which was long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2008, the most prestigious non-fiction award in the UK and won the American Horticultural Society 2010 Book Award as well as the CBHL 2010 Annual Literature Award. She is a three-time fellow of the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello and the Eccles British Library Writer in Residence 2013. Presenting Sponsor 2015-2016 45 Exhibit Series 46 Season Profile 2015-2016 47 48 Season Profile Wednesday, January 6 to Friday, January 29, 2016 10am to 4pm EXHIBIT: Palm Beach Interiors of Theodore Colebrook 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to public This exhibition will present a collection of rarely-seen paintings of the interiors of some of Palm Beach’s most famous houses. They are commissions of the well-known private painter Theodore Colebrook. Colebrook was a painter very early in his life. He was born in 1950 and by age six he had presented a self-portrait to his mother. This charming little picture, along with many more childhood paintings survive, thanks to her, and they attest to what has always been a driving force in his life. As a child, he told grown-ups that he wanted to be a painter and a sculptor when he grew up. Then, amazingly, through all of the opportunities and distractions of the 1960’s and ‘70’s, Colebrook actually became what he wanted to be. Now, the growing number of those who admire and collect his work are thrilled that he did. Knowledge of the subject is clearly evident throughout Colebrook’s work. Close examination of his paintings reveals subtle, wonderful detail. From stirrup leathers to stone walls and rigging to the rising tide, the serious viewer understands that the objects of his gaze are part of his life experience. Viewers can feel what he paints in the changing terrain of the landscape and can smell the smoke in the humid air. Clients of commissioned works have described how they actually see more in their own interiors or their own gardens after having studied Colebrooks’s fluent depictions. But then, of course, that is what good painters have always done. There are many who have described the wonderful affect achieved by his combination of free paint application and precise perspective, but his teacher and mentor, Bill Draper, probably expressed it best as he introduced Colebrook so many times by saying, “he is a good painter, a Good Painter!” 2015-2016 49 50 Season Profile Wednesday, February 10 to Friday, February 26, 2016 10am to 4pm EXHIBIT: Palm Beach Through the Lens of Bert Morgan 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to public A friend of the Rockefellers, Kennedys, Hearsts and Harrimans, Bert Morgan became the photographer of choice for high society starting in the 1930’s. By promising never to publish an unflattering picture, he gained unlimited access to this rarefied post-gilded-age world, which he followed seasonally from New York and Long Island to Palm Beach, Newport, Saratoga, and the Hamptons. This exhibit will showcase some of his greatest Palm Beach photographs. Bert Morgan was born in England in 1904, came to America at age seven and was raised in Brooklyn. He began his career at fifteen syndicating photographs for the Chicago Tribune and the New York Daily News. By 1930, he began taking his own photographs with a camera he bought for a quarter. For five decades he would chronicle High Society events and it’s luminaries, as well as becoming the official track photographer of the New York Racing Association. His work was regularly published in magazines such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Town & Country. 2015-2016 51 film Nights 52 Season Profile 2015-2016 53 54 Season Profile Monday, December 14, 2015 6pm FILM NIGHT: Youth (2015) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only How do we achieve permanence and success in art, design and even life? Youth is about two longtime friends vacationing in the Swiss Alps. Oscar winning actor Michael Caine plays Fred, an acclaimed composer and conductor, who brings along his daughter (Rachel Weisz) and best friend Mick (Harvey Keitel), a renowned filmmaker. While Mick scrambles to finish the screenplay for what he imagines will be his last important film, Fred has no intention of resuming his musical career. The two men reflect on their past, each finding that some of the most important experiences can come later in life. It is a story of the eternal struggle between age and youth, the past and the future, life and death, commitment and betrayal. The cast also includes Paul Dano and Jane Fonda. “Youth is a voluptuary’s feast, a full-body immersion in the sensory pleasures of the cinema.” – The Hollywood Reporter “The film is often remarkable, gorgeous even - many of the shots in Youth would make excellent closing shots, including the opening shot - and funny. It’s a work of wonderful moments.” - CineVue 2015-2016 55 56 Season Profile Sunday, January 3, 2016 6pm FILM NIGHT: Downton Abbey Season 6 Premiere 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only The award-winning and popular British period drama returns for its sixth and final season. The sixth series takes place in the 1920s and continues to detail the trials and tribulations of the Crawleys, a family of nobility living on an estate called Downton Abbey. It also follows the lives of the servants on the estate. The preservation of the family estate continues to be the focus of the series. The series picks up six months after the end of Series 5, in 1925. Lord Grantham has begun to wonder whether it is time to further reduce the household staff, in line with the times - with virtually no one running a household with lots of staff as they currently do. A former housemaid at the Grand Hotel attempts to blackmail Mary Crawley. Mrs. Hughes is reluctant to set a date for her wedding with Mr. Carson, as she feels she is not as good looking as she was in her youth. “There is no mystery about the potency of this series, slathered in wit, powered by storytelling of a high order.” – The Wall Street Journal “From virtually any angle, though, Downton Abbey is an almost peerless piece of real estate.” - Variety 2015-2016 57 58 Season Profile Monday, January 4, 2016 6pm FILM NIGHT: Jalsaghar – The Music Room (1958) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Filmed at the famous palace of Roy Chowdhurys in Nimtita, known as the Nimtita Rajbari, Jalsaghar - The Music Room brilliantly evokes the crumbling opulence of the world of a fallen aristocrat (the beloved actor Chhabi Biswas) desperately clinging to a fading way of life which he fails to preserve. His greatest joy is the music room in which he has hosted lavish concerts over the years - now a shadow of its former vivid self. An incandescent depiction of the clash between tradition and modernity, and a showcase for some of India’s most popular musicians of the day, famed Indian director Satyajit Ray’s Jalsaghar - The Music Room is a defining work by the great Bengali filmmaker. “A nuanced psychological portrait of an aristocrat in decline.” – Q Network Film Desk “It’s a fascinating snapshot of Indian culture in the 1930s, and a cautionary tale about the dangers of an inflated opinion of self-worth.” – ReelViews “This production is an extraordinary mixture of distinctive Bengali culture and universal themes of emotional loss.” – Film Threat 2015-2016 59 60 Season Profile Monday, January 11, 2016 6pm FILM NIGHT: A Little Chaos (2014) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only A romantic drama following Sabine, a talented landscape designer, who is building a garden at Versailles for King Louis XIV. Sabine struggles with class barriers as she becomes romantically entangled with the court’s renowned landscape artist. “True French historians should simply relax and enjoy a film that takes us on a beautifully photographed cinematic romp into a past as it likely should have been.” - Chicago Sun-Times 2015-2016 61 62 Season Profile Monday, January 18, 2016 6pm FILM NIGHT: Enjo – Conflagration (1958) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Enjo - Conflagration is a 1958 Japanese film directed by Kon Ichikawa and adapted from the Yukio Mishima novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. It dramatizes the true story of Goichi, a young Buddhist acolyte from a dysfunctional family who is sent to a temple in the northern hills of Kyoto - the Golden Pavilion - for further study. The original pavilion was a villa constructed by the Shogun Yoshimitsu (1358-1409) as a place for leisurely relaxation. After he died, the gold-leafed building was given over for religious use as a temple. Shy and idealistic - and hindered by a stuttering problem - Goichi arrives at the temple haunted by his dying father’s sentiment that the Golden Pavilion of the Shukaku Temple is the most beautiful thing in the world. “This dignified, purposeful film is often touching as a case history of doomed innocence at bay. But its coils of compromise and corruption are even more credible and haunting.” – New York Times 2015-2016 63 64 Season Profile Monday, January 25, 2016 6pm FILM NIGHT: Casque d’or (1952) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Casque d’or lovingly evokes the Paris demimonde of 1900 in this classic tale of doomed romance. When gangster’s moll Marie (Simone Signoret) falls for reformed criminal Manda (Serge Reggiani), their passion incites an underworld rivalry that leads inexorably to treachery and tragedy. With poignant, nuanced performances and sensuous black-and-white photography, Casque d’or is director Jacques Becker at the height of his cinematic powers – a perfect cultural recreation of a time and place now lost to us. “An excellent recreation of a colorful French period.” - Variety “An insular underworld drama of love and revenge vibrates authentically against a vividly etched background of early century Paris.” - New York Times “One of the great movie romances.” - Time Out 2015-2016 65 66 Season Profile Monday, February 1, 2016 6pm FILM NIGHT: The Cruise (1998) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only The Cruise is director Bennett Miller’s documentary portrait of New York City tour bus guide/street philosopher Timothy “Speed” Levitch. It is an unsummarizable comedy, tragedy, love letter to the city and the anatomy of innocence. It was the debut film of Bennett Miller, who became prominent after directing Capote (2005). “Levitch (who has now retired and gives private tours) became a legend in the New York bus tour universe in the mid-1990s; customers, far from being confused by his curious rants, recommended his tours to one another. That makes a kind of sense. You can see buildings anywhere, but Levitch is the kind of sight perhaps only New York could engender.” – Roger Ebert “Timothy ”Speed” Levitch, the singular subject of Bennett Miller’s inspired, inspiring documentary The Cruise, is the kind of New York City character for whom New York City was invented. . . . A man on life’s margins with a philosophy that margins can’t contain, he sees New York existence as a cruise for enlightenment; everything that gets in the way (cops, Mom, streets laid out in a grid) is the ‘anti-cruise.’” – Entertainment Weekly “Perhaps most expressive of [Levitch’s] conflicted view of New York, and civilization as a whole, is a bitter rant about how the grid system of Manhattan’s street plan reinforces and perpetuates people’s tendency to live lives of mediocrity and failure, generation after generation.” - Variety 2015-2016 67 68 Season Profile Monday, February 8, 2016 6pm FILM NIGHT: Around the World with Orson Welles (1955) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only The renowned Orson Welles, who wrote and directed this 1955 British television series for Associated Rediffusion, lends his inimitable style to this tour through Europe, meeting up with celebrities and ordinary people, discussing everything. He visits the Basque Country region between Spain and France. Then he goes to Vienna, where he takes viewers to some of the locations of his famous film The Third Man and explains Viennese coffeehouse culture. Finally, it is off to St-Germain-des-Pres where Welles meets with Jean Cocteau and Juliette Gréco. Somewhere between a home movie and a cinematic essay, these short films have been described by French critics as the missing link in Welles’ work. “It remains an incredibly addictive proposition, partly because the sight of Welles cadging cherries off children or responding to hecklers is so bizarre, and partly because he proves, like an eccentric uncle, remarkably entertaining company. . . He’s just as likely to worry over the declining popularity of Viennese coffee houses as he is to regale the camera with jokes about Romanian cooking and aborted adolescent flirtation at the opera.” – Pop Matters 2015-2016 69 70 Season Profile Monday, February 15, 2016 6pm FILM NIGHT: People (2013) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Britain’s most celebrated comic playwright, Alan Bennett (The History Boys, Habit of Art), deals with the travails of a crumbling stately home and its ageing owner in this recent work. People spoil things; there are so many of them and the last thing one wants is them traipsing through one’s house. But with the park a jungle and a bath on the billiard table, what is one to do? Dorothy (Frances de la Tour) wonders if an attic sale could be a solution. “Wonderfully funny.” - The Times “Provocative fun... entertaining, funny and touching.” - Daily Telegraph 2015-2016 71 72 Season Profile Monday, February 22, 2016 6pm FILM NIGHT: From Up on Poppy Hill (2011) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Set in 1963 Yokohama, Japan, the film tells the story of Umi Matsuzaki, a high school girl living in a boarding house, Coquelicot Manor. When Umi meets Shun Kazama, a member of the school’s newspaper club, they decide to clean up the school’s clubhouse, Quartier Latin. However, Tokumaru, the chairman of the local high school and a businessman, intends to demolish the building for redevelopment and Umi and Shun, along with Shir Mizunuma, must persuade him to reconsider. “From Up on Poppy Hill is frankly stunning, as beautiful a hand-drawn animated feature as you are likely to see. It’s a time-machine dream of a not-so-distant past, a sweet and honestly sentimental story.” – Los Angeles Times “Goro Miyazaki’s film is about the point at which we decide not what we want to be when we grow up, but who, and the way the tiniest moments in our lives often have the most far-reaching effect.” – The Telegraph “Its visual magic lies in painterly compositions of foliage, clouds, architecture and water, and its emotional impact comes from the way everyday life is washed in the colors of memory.” – New York Times 2015-2016 73 74 Season Profile Monday, March 7, 2016 6pm FILM NIGHT: La Sapienza (2015) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Named for the famous seventeenth-century Roman church Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza, which was designed by the legendary architect (and Bernini rival) Francesco Borromini, La Sapienza echoes Rossellini’s Viaggio in Italia in its tale of Alexandre Schmid (Fabrizio Rongione), a brilliant architect who, plagued by doubts and loss of inspiration, embarks on a quest of artistic and spiritual renewal guided by his study of Borromini. His wife Aliénor (Christelle Prot), similarly troubled by the crassness of contemporary society - as well as the couple’s lack of communication and passion decides to accompany him. In Stresa, a chance encounter with adolescent siblings Goffredo (who is about to commence his own architectural studies) and his fragile sister Lavinia upends the couple’s plans. As Borromini’s spirit and the vertiginous splendor of his structures spin a mysterious web among them, within the course of a few days the foursome experiences a series of life-altering revelations. “Juxtaposes insights on how people are emotionally connected with ruminations on the buildings and spaces through which they move, in which they live and, in Alexandre’s case, which they also create.” - Hollywood Reporter “Layered with reels of swirling shots of Rome’s most beautiful buildings - all crucially shot from the ground upwards, staring at the heavens - La Sapienza is visually stunning.” - The National “While Green’s film is dense with historical fact and theory, it’s not averse to plumbing life’s mysteries. Suffused with warmth, it expresses a potent admiration for human striving and accomplishment.” - Film Comment 2015-2016 75 76 Season Profile Monday, March 14, 2016 6pm FILM NIGHT: Berlin - Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt/Symphony of a Great City (1927) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only This movie shows us one day in Berlin, the rhythm of that time, starting at the earliest morning and ends in the deepest night. The film is an example of the city symphony film genre. As a city symphony film, it portrays the life of a city, mainly through visual impressions in a semi-documentary style, without the narrative content of more mainstream films, though the sequencing of events can imply a kind of loose theme or impression of the city’s daily life. What is critically interesting about this particular film shot in Berlin, Germany is the timeframe in which it was made. It is very significant that in watching this film today that it is watched not just for its onetime artistic or style value but as a type of filmed “time-capsule” an invaluable historical filmed record of the great city of Berlin in the mid to late 1920’s which no longer exists today. Over 30% of central Berlin was leveled during the Allied bombing campaigns at the end of World War II changing the face of old Berlin forever The film offers viewers a chance to open up their understanding of the communities around them and the way people interact with the character of their surroundings. “It remains a unique and sometimes inspired exercise in style for its own sake.” – Chicago Reader “More of a montage of images than an actual movie, this is a deeply fascinating documentary.” – Film4 2015-2016 77 78 Season Profile Monday, March 21, 2016 6pm FILM NIGHT: The Rise and Fall of Penn Station (2014) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only In 1910, the Pennsylvania Railroad successfully accomplished the enormous engineering feat of building tunnels under New York City’s Hudson and East Rivers, connecting the railroad to New York and eventually to New England, knitting together the entire eastern half of the United States. The tunnels terminated in what was one of the greatest architectural achievements of its time, Pennsylvania Station. Inspired by Paris’ Gare d’Orsay and the Roman baths of Caracalla, Pennsylvania Station covered nearly eight acres, extended two city blocks, and housed one of the largest public spaces in the world; many of the 100,000 attendees of Penn Station’s grand opening proclaimed it to be one of the wonders of the world. But just 53 years after the station’s opening, what was supposed to last forever, to herald and represent the American Empire, was slated to be destroyed. The financially-strapped Pennsylvania Railroad announced it had sold the air rights above Penn Station, and would tear down what had once been the company’s crowning jewel to build Madison Square Garden, a high-rise office building and sports complex. On the rainy morning of October 28, 1963, the demolition began; it took three years to dismantle the monumental station. The monumental edifice was gone, but the tunnels and the trains remain, serving millions of people every year. 2015-2016 79 80 Season Profile Monday, March 28, 2016 6pm FILM NIGHT: Louis Sullivan - The Struggle for American Architecture (2010) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only The first feature-length documentary about the revolutionary and brilliant Chicago architect Louis Sullivan (1856-1924). Known by historians as the ‘father of the skyscraper’ and creator of the iconic phrase ‘form follows function,’ Sullivan was on top of his profession in 1890. Then a series of setbacks plunged him into destitute obscurity from which he never fully recovered. Yet his persistent belief in the power of his ideas created some of America’s most beautiful buildings ever created, and inspired Sullivan’s protégé, Frank Lloyd Wright, to fulfill his own dream of a truly American style of architecture. Magnificent footage of surviving Sullivan buildings combined with thoughtful insight by Sullivan scholars and great storytelling, this award-winning film has won approval from architects, educators and critics. 2015-2016 81 82 Season Profile Monday, April 4, 2016 6pm FILM NIGHT: Russkij Kovcheg - Russian Ark (2002) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only As successful as it is ambitious, Russkij Kovcheg - Russian Ark condenses three centuries of Russian culture into a single, uninterrupted, take. It was filmed entirely in the Winter Palace of the Russian State Hermitage Museum. It is shot from the point-of-view of an unseen narrator, as he explores the museum and travels through Russian history. The audience sees through his eyes as he witnesses Peter the Great (Maksim Sergeyev) abusing one of his generals; Catherine the Great (Maria Kuznetsova) desperately searching for a bathroom; and, in the grand finale, the sumptuous Great Royal Ball of 1913. The narrator is eventually joined by a sarcastic and eccentric 19th century French Marquis (Sergey Dreiden), who travels with him throughout the huge grounds, encountering various historical figures and viewing the legendary artworks on display. While the narrator only interacts with the Marquis (he seems to be invisible to all the other inhabitants), the Marquis occasionally interacts with visitors and former residents of the museum. The film was obviously shot in one day, but the cast and crew rehearsed for months to time their movements precisely with the flow of the camera while capturing the complex narrative, with elaborate costumes from different periods, and several trips out to the exterior of the museum. “The result is a magnificent feast for the eyes and brain.” - New York Post “Dazzling dance to the music of time.” - Village Voice “Might well be the first real masterpiece of the 21st Century.” - Denver Rocky Mountain News “It’s a rich, complex, and mystery-filled journey through Russian art and history.” Looking Closer 2015-2016 83 84 Season Profile Monday, April 11, 2016 6pm FILM NIGHT: The Price of Desire (2015) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Irish architect and furniture designer Eileen Gray (1878–1976) was a leading light in the modern design movement. This graceful portrayal of her later life and work in France focusses on the triangle of tension between Gray (Orla Brady), her lover Badovici (Francesco Scianna) and architect Le Corbusier (Vincent Perez). Alanis Morrissette also features as chanteuse Marisa Damia, Gray’s other lover, with Dominique Pinon (Delicatessen, Amélie) as artist Fernand Léger. 2015-2016 85 86 Season Profile Monday, April 18, 2016 6pm FILM NIGHT: Philip Johnson - Diary of an Eccentric Architect (1997) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only In this documentary, ninety-year-old architect Philip Johnson takes viewers on a personal tour of his 40-acre estate in New Canaan, Connecticut, and provides insight into the structures he designed for this carefully constructed environment. “My place in New Canaan is...a diary of an eccentric architect.” Thus begins a fascinating look into the mind of one of our most creative and significant architects. Philip Johnson was always on the forefront of stylistic change, and his property in New Canaan, Connecticut, is a kind of laboratory where Johnson was his own best client. It was there that he built the famous ‘Glass House’ that he resided in for so many years. This building has no walls; (the landscape became “expensive wallpaper”) an accompanying guest house, by contrast, has no windows, though it is light and sensuous inside. The film visits these, as well as the gallery which houses Johnson’s extensive collection of contemporary art on its revolving walls. “My latest folly,” says Johnson, “is to build buildings without straight lines...It’s the first time I’ve had a building I can’t draw and have to design partially as it goes up.” This new structure is at the core of the film, and we are able to see the sculptural building progress from its initial stages to completion. This documentary depicts Johnson at work and the importance of the architectural act, the actual construction, and how the buildings interact with their environment - in this case, the autumn leaves or snow of New Canaan. 2015-2016 87 88 Season Profile Monday, April 25, 2016 6pm FILM NIGHT: Wind Across the Everglades (1958) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Set in the early 20th century, the film follows a game warden (Christopher Plummer) who arrives in Florida in the hopes of enforcing conservation laws. He soon finds himself pitted against Cottonmouth (Burl Ives), the leader of a fierce group of bird poachers. The poachers are after certain endangered birds because their tail feathers look nice in women’s hats. The film was loosely based upon the life and death of Guy Bradley, an early game warden. “Nicholas Ray magnificently directs, catching the adventurous vibes of the period, the hypnotic mood behind the area folklore and the flavor of the outlaw poachers as protesters against civilized society (showing them as closer to nature than the civilized business folks in Miami or even the appointed nature loving Audubon warden). Through cinematographer Joseph Brun’s fine camera work, the ravishing array of location colors makes for an arresting watch. . . it’s an unusually powerful pic that shows Ray as the rebel with a cause - someone who always manages to make provocative and intelligent films even when dealing with tough circumstances.” - Ozus’ World Movie Reviews 2015-2016 89 90 Season Profile Monday, May 2, 2016 6:00 pm FILM NIGHT: The Lego Movie (2014) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only In this tale, an ordinary LEGO minifigure, mistakenly thought to be the extraordinary Master Builder, is recruited to join a quest to stop an evil LEGO tyrant from gluing the universe together into eternal stasis. “Like the toy it’s based on, it’s goofy and colorful and something adults and children can enjoy together.” - Portland Oregonian “The LEGO Movie is the kind of animated free-for-all that comes around very rarely, if ever: A kids’ movie that matches shameless fun with razor-sharp wit, that offers up a spectacle of pure, freewheeling joy even as it tackles the thorniest of issues.” - New York Magazine “This is truly a movie that children and their parents can both enjoy for different reasons.” - ReelViews “The funniest, cleverest, most exhaustingly exhilarating animated feature in ages.” - Time 2015-2016 91 Garden Classes 92 Season Profile 2015-2016 93 94 Season Profile Friday, March 18, 2016 11am GARDEN CLASS: Beneficial Insects Pan’s Garden Members only – $50 equipment fee Preservation Foundation Director of Gardens Daniele Garson will lead participants through a class about nature’s best garden pest control, beneficial insects in Pan’s Garden. Beneficial insects provide an environmentally sound biological method for controlling pests that damage garden plants. During this class particpants will learn to identify common garden pests and the insects that prey on them. 2015-2016 95 96 Season Profile Friday, April 22, 2016 11am GARDEN CLASS: Avian Planting Pan’s Garden Members only – $50 equipment fee Preservation Foundation Director of Gardens Daniele Garson will lead participants through a class on avian gardening in Pan’s Garden. With their many colors, intricate calls, and splendid displays birds offer garden enthusiasts hours of enjoyment and relaxation. Participants will decorate their own bird houses and discuss tips for attracting avian friends to gardens. 2015-2016 97 Musicale Series 98 Season Profile 2015-2016 99 100 Season Profile Friday, April 1, 2016 4pm MUSICALE: Yale Whiffenpoofs Pan’s Garden Free to public Every year, fourteen senior Yale men are selected to be the Whiffenpoofs, the world’s oldest and most famous collegiate a cappella group. Founded in 1909, the “Whiffs” began as a senior quintet that met for weekly concerts at Mory’s Temple Bar, the renowned Yale tavern and club. Today, the group has become one of Yale’s most celebrated and hallowed traditions, carrying on almost a century of musical excellence and professional showmanship at Yale, across America, and around the world. Each Whiffenpoof group maintains a busy performance schedule throughout the year, records an album, and circles the globe on a six-continent world tour. Audiences have included such notable figures as Presidents Obama and Bush, the Dalai Lama, Mother Theresa, and fans at Carnegie Hall, the Lincoln Center, the Rose Bowl, the World Series, Saturday Night Live, and Glee. 2015-2016 101 Calendar of events All events subject to change 102 Season Profile November | 2015 Friday, November 25, 2015 6pm Book Signing/Cocktail Reception: 40 Years of Fabulous: The Kips Bay Decorator Show House by Steven Stolman 311 Peruvian Avenue Invitation Only December | 2015 Friday, December 11, 2015 Noon Membership Luncheon and Ballinger and Volunteer Awards The Breakers Invitation only J a n u a r y | 2 0 1 6 | continued Tuesday, January 5, 2016 6pm Cocktail Reception: Palm Beach Interiors of Theodore Colebrook Exhibit Preview 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Wednesday, January 6 to Friday, January 29, 2016 10am to 4pm Exhibit: Palm Beach Interiors of Theodore Colebrook 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to public Monday, December 14, 2015 6pm Film Night: Youth (2015) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Thursday, January 7, 2016 2pm Lecture/Book Signing: The Age of Empire - Britain’s Imperial Architecture From 1880 to 1930 by Clive Aslet 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members Wednesday, December 16, 2015 6pm Members’ Christmas Party 311 Peruvian Avenue Invitation only Monday, January 11, 2016 6pm Film Night: A Little Chaos (2014) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only January | 2016 Sunday, January 3, 2016 6pm Film Night: Downton Abbey Season 6 Premiere 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Monday, January 4, 2016 6pm Film Night: Jalsaghar – The Music Room (1958) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Wednesday, January 13, 2016 Noon Trustees Meeting and Polly Earl Award 311 Peruvian Avenue Invitation only Thursday, January 14, 2016 2pm Lecture: Tony Sabatino on ‘The Restoration of Mizner Memorial Fountain’ Free to members - $20 non-members Monday, January 18, 2016 6pm Film Night: Enjo – Conflagration (1958) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Thursday, January 21, 2016 2pm Lecture/Book Signing: World Monuments - 50 Irreplaceable Sites to Discover and Champion by George H. McNeely 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members Monday, January 25, 2016 6pm Film Night: Casque d’or (1952) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Thursday, January 28, 2016 9am to Noon Historic Properties Workshop 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to Public Friday, January 29, 2016 2pm Lecture/Book Signing: The Other Paris by Luc Sante 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members Fe b r u a r y | 2 0 1 6 Monday, February 1, 2016 6pm Film Night: The Cruise (1998) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only 2015-2016 103 Fe b r u a r y | 2 0 1 6 Thursday, February 4, 2016 2pm Lecture/Book Signing: City on a Grid: How New York Became New York by Gerard Koeppel 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members Monday, February 8, 2016 6pm Film Night: Around the World with Orson Welles (1955) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Tuesday, February 9, 2016 6pm Cocktail Reception: Palm Beach Through the Lens of Bert Morgan Exhibit Preview 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Wednesday, February 10 to Friday, February 26, 2016 10am to 4pm Exhibit: Palm Beach Through the Lens of Bert Morgan 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to public Thursday, February 11, 2016 2pm Lecture/Book Signing: The Walk to/from Elsie’s by Hutton Wilkinson and Flynn Kuhnert 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members Monday, February 15, 2016 6pm Film Night: People (2013) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Thursday, February 18, 2016 2pm Lecture: Tom Mayes on ‘Why Do Old Places Matter?’ Free to members - $20 non-members 104 Season Profile M a rch | 2 0 1 6 Friday, February 19, 2016 2pm Lecture: James Corner on ‘The High Line and Landscape Architecture’ Free to members - $20 non-members Monday, February 22, 2016 6pm Film Night: From Up on Poppy Hill (2011) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Thursday, February 25, 2016 2pm Lecture: Toshiko Mori on ‘Saving Japanese Modern Architecture’ Free to members - $20 non-members Friday, February 26, 2016 2pm Walking Tour 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to Sponsor and above members $50 Patron and below members M a rch | 2 0 1 6 Friday, March 4, 2016 7:30pm Annual Gala Dinner Dance Benefit The Breakers Invitation only Monday, March 7, 2016 6pm Film Night: La Sapienza (2015) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Thursday, March 10, 2016 2pm Lecture/Book Signing: A Natural History of English Gardening: 1650–1800 by Mark Laird 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members Friday, March 11, 2016 2pm Lecture/Book Signing: Open City by Teju Cole 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members Monday, March 14, 2016 6pm Film Night: Berlin - Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt/Symphony of a Great City (1927) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Thursday, March 17, 2016 2pm Lecture/Book Signing: Goldeneye Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming’s Jamaica by Matthew Parker 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members Friday, March 18, 2016 11am Garden Class: Beneficial Insects Pan’s Garden Members only – $50 equipment fee Friday, March 18, 2016 2pm Lecture/Book Signing: Berlin Portrait of a City Through the Centuries by Rory MacLean 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members Monday, March 21, 2016 6pm Film Night: The Rise and Fall of Penn Station (2014) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Friday, March 25, 2016 2pm Gruss Master Lecture: Jacques Grange The Colony Hotel Free to members - $20 non-members M a rch | 2 0 1 6 Monday, March 28, 2016 6pm Film Night: Louis Sullivan The Struggle for American Architecture (2010) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Thursday, March 31, 2016 2pm Lecture/Book Signing: Building Art – The Life and Work of Frank Gehry by Paul Goldberger 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members April | 2016 Friday, April 1, 2016 4pm Musicale: Yale Whiffenpoofs Pan’s Garden Free to public Monday, April 4, 2016 6pm Film Night: Russkij Kovcheg Russian Ark (2002) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Thursday, April 7, 2016 Noon Elizabeth L. and John H. Schuler Award Presentation/Lecture and Buffet Lunch 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $40 non-members Friday, April 8, 2016 2pm Lecture: Rosamund Bartlett on ‘Psychology of a City - The Architecture of St. Petersburg’ Free to members - $20 non-members April | 2016 Monday, April 11, 2016 6pm Film Night: The Price of Desire (2015) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Thursday, April 14, 2016 2pm Lecture: Monica Ponce de Leon, the new dean of Princeton’s School of Architecture The Colony Hotel Free to members - $20 non-members Thursday, April 14, 2016 7pm Preservationist Club Dinner and the Lesly S. Smith Landscape Award Presentation 311 Peruvian Avenue Invitation only Friday, April 15, 2016 2pm Lecture/Book Signing: Michael Hoffman on Joseph Roth’s The Hotel Years 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members Monday, April 18, 2016 6pm Film Night: Philip Johnson - Diary of an Eccentric Architect (1997) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Friday, April 22, 2016 11am Garden Class: Avian Planting Pan’s Garden Members only – $50 equipment fee Monday, April 25, 2016 6pm Film Night: Wind Across the Everglades (1958) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Thursday, April 28, 2016 2pm Lecture/Book Signing: The Invention of Nature Alexander von Humboldt’s New World by Andrea Wulf 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members Friday, April 29, 2016 7:30pm Modern Friends Garden Party Pan’s Garden Invitation only May | 2016 Monday, May 2, 2016 6:00 pm Film Night: The Lego Movie (2014) 311 Peruvian Avenue Members only Thursday, April 21, 2016 2pm Lecture/Book Signing: The Future of Architecture in 100 Buildings by Marc Kushner 311 Peruvian Avenue Free to members - $20 non-members 2015-2016 105 Presorted First Class U. S. Postage PAID 311 Peruvian Avenue Palm Beach, Florida 33480 West Palm Beach, FL Permit No. 1151