Film screening and panel discussion will take place in the Seattle Art Museum’s Nordstrom Lecture Hall.
What could be more appropriate than a discussion of terra cotta within the walls of the terra cotta clad building that the renowned Post- Modernist firm of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown designed for the Seattle Art Museum downtown?
Carol Gregory has produced a short documentary, America’s Hometown: Terra Cotta directed by Brian Moratti and edited by Chris Martin. The film was presented at the 2013 Vancouver International Film Festival. It explores the use of terra cotta in architecture and art from 1890 to 1940. Through interviews, archival images, and film, the documentary looks at the work life of the mostly unknown men who covered and decorated America’s high rises in terra cotta. It questions what you do with the art attached to 100-year-old buildings. America’s Hometown: Terra Cotta encourages understanding of the artistic gifts left to us by earlier generations and urgency in preserving it for the enrichment of future generations. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with an expert in terra cotta restoration, an architect involved in saving and reconstructing a terra cotta showroom façade, the editor of an important work on Seattle’s iconic terra cotta buildings with an introduction by Robert Venturi, and museum and university staff who are preserving valuable terra cotta business records. Photographs, drawings, and samples will be on display.
Panelists
Mark Morden, Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc.: Creating new Arctic Club walruses
Rhoda A.R. Lawrence, Principal, BOLA Architecture + Planning: Saving and reconstructing the Lincoln-Mercury showroom facade
Lydia Aldredge, Archetype: The making of Impressions of Imagination: Terra Cotta Seattle
Hilary Pittenger, Curator of Collections, White River Valley Museum: The Northern Clay Company archives, photographs, and fragments
Nicolette Bromberg, Special Collections, Univ. of Washington Libraries: John W. Elliot, Gladding McBean, and campus building ornamentation
Co-sponsored by the Seattle Art Museum.
Photo: Seattle Art Museum / Credit: Benjamin Benschneider
Cost:
$35 general public / $25 members / $10 students