Expressionist Architecture

Iain Boyd Whyte to discuss work of Bruno Taut Oct. 2

Distinguished scholar Iain Boyd Whyte, professor of architectural history at the University of Edinburgh and a senior visiting program officer for the Getty Grant Program, will speak on Expressionist Architecture at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 2, for the Washington University Gallery of Art.

The lecture is free and open to the public and takes place in the Gallery of Art’s Steinberg Auditorium, located in Steinberg Hall, at the intersection of Skinker and Forsyth boulevards. For more information, call (314) 935-4523.

Whyte’s research focuses on 19th and 20th century architecture, particularly early architectural modernism in the German-speaking countries and the Netherlands. Expressionist Architecture will examine the work of the German modernist architect Bruno Taut. Whyte is an authority on Taut’s work, having edited the collection Crystal Chain Letters: Architectural Fantasies by Bruno Taut and His Circle (1989).

Other research interests include architectural and aesthetic theory, film and architecture and Anglo-German literary relations. He has also written extensively on German painting and was co-curator of the 23rd Council of Europe Exhibition, Art and Power: Europe Under the Dictators 1930-46, shown in London, Barcelona and Berlin in 1995-96.

Recent publications include the forthcoming Biopolis: Patrick Geddes and the City of Life, Modernism and the Spirit of the City (2003) and What is Modernism (1999). Work in progress include a reader on the German city, in collaboration with David Frisby, professor at the University of Glasgow.

The lecture is sponsored by the Washington University Gallery of Art as well as the departments of Art History & Archaeology and Germanic Languages & Literatures, both in Arts & Sciences.