Access Restricted: Speaker Bios
Photo courtesy of The Woolworth Building Archives
About the Speakers
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Giovanna Borasi
February 2, 2011
Giovanna Borasi is an architect, curator, and editor. Curator of Contemporary Architecture at the Canadian Centre for Architecture since 2005, Borasi has developed several research projects, with a particular focus on how environmental and social issues are influencing today’s urbanism and architecture. Before joining the CCA, Giovanna Borasi was editor and writer for Lotus International and Lotus Navigator.
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Jeff Byles
February 9, 2011
Jeff Byles has written about architecture, urbanism, and culture for The New York Times, The Village Voice, Metropolis, and other publications. Formerly a managing editor at The Architect’s Newspaper, he is the author of Rubble: Unearthing the History of Demolition, and is co-author of the forthcoming History of Design.
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Clifford Chanin
January 19, 2011
Clifford Chanin founded The Legacy Project in 2000, a non-profit research group dedicated to documenting contemporary responses to historical traumas in societies around the world. Chanin is also Acting Director of Education and Senior Program Advisor at the National September 11 Memorial Museum at the World Trade Center. For ten years, Chanin was Associate Director of Arts and Humanities at the Rockefeller Foundation.
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Douglas Crimp
March 23, 2011
Douglas Crimp is a professor of Art History at the University of Rochester and the author of On the Museum’s Ruins, 1993. Crimp was the curator of the Pictures exhibition at Artists Space, New York, in 1977. With Lynne Cooke, he organized the exhibition Mixed Use, Manhattan for the Reina Sofía in Madrid in the summer of 2010.
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Steven Davis
January 19, 2011
Steven M. Davis, FAIA is the designer of the National September 11 Museum at the World Trade Center. His involvement at the World Trade Center began in 1992 when he developed the Public Space Master Plan with the goal of reintegrating the complex into its Lower Manhattan context. Davis’ contributions to architecture have been awarded the Presidential Award for Design Excellence, several American Institute of Architects Awards for Excellence in Design and three Business Week/Architectural Record Awards.
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Frederick Kaufman
March 9, 2011
Frederick Kaufman’s third book, A Short History of the American Stomach, won the Gourmand World Cookbook Award for "Best Culinary History Book, 2008." A Contributing Editor at Harper’s Magazine, Kaufman has been a featured guest on National Public Radio, Bloomberg TV, and Democracy Now! He blogs at AmericanStomach.com.
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David M. Oestreicher
April 13, 2011
Dr. David M. Oestreicher is recognized as a leading authority on the Lenape (Delaware) having conducted linguistic and ethnographic research among the last tribal traditionalists for over 30 years. Oestreicher recently curated the exhibition, Lenape: Ellis Island’s First Inhabitants at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum. His writings have appeared in scholarly journals and books and he is the author of “Unmasking the Walam Olum: a 19th-Century Hoax,” which demonstrated conclusively for the first time that the Walam Olum, an allegedly ancient Lenape migration epic, is spurious.
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Gregory Sholette
March 9, 2011
Gregory Sholette is a New York-based artist, writer, and founding member of Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D: 1980-1988), and REPOhistory (1989-2000). His recent publications include Dark Matter: Art and Politics in an Age of Enterprise Culture; Collectivism After Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945, with Blake Stimson; and The Interventionists: A Users Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life with Nato Thompson. He is an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Queens College: City University of New York (CUNY). More information can be found at gregorysholette.com and darkmatterarchives.net.
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Michael Sorkin
February 9, 2011
Michael Sorkin is Distinguished Professor of Architecture and Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design at the City College of New York. He is principal of the Michael Sorkin Studio, a design practice that works at all scales with a special interest in the city and sustainable design. Sorkin lectures widely and is the author of several hundred articles on architectural and urban subjects. For ten years he was the architectural critic of the Village Voice. His books include Variations on a Theme Park, Exquisite Corpse, Giving Ground (edited with Joan Copjec), Wiggle, Local Code, Some Assembly Required, The Next Jerusalem, After the World Trade Center (edited with Sharon Zukin), Starting from Zero, Against the Wall, Indefensible Space and Twenty Minutes in Manhattan. Forthcoming are Eutopia, All Over the Map, and Project New Orleans. Sorkin is also President of Terreform, a non-profit engaged in urban research and advocacy and President of The Institute for Urban Design.
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John Kuo Wei Tchen
March 9, 2011
Jack (John Kuo Wei) Tchen is a teacher, historian, curator, and dumpster diver. In 1980, he co-founded the Museum of Chinese in America. He is an author of award-winning books and is currently working on The Yellow Peril Reader and a book on intermingling and improvisation in the streets of New York City.
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Mirko Zardini
February 2, 2011
Mirko Zardini, an architect, is the Director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture since 2005. His research engages the transformation of contemporary architecture and its relationship with the city and the landscape.
