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Pidgeon Audio Visual: Architects Speak for Themselves Opening Talk and Reception
Oct 28, 2022 (6pm)
Opening Reception

Free admission, reservations required

6 p.m. Introductory talk by curator Florencia Alvarez Pacheco, followed by a conversation with Felicity Scott and Mark Wasiuta
Reception to follow

Join us for a reception and introductory remarks to celebrate the opening of our fall exhibition Pidgeon Audio Visual: Architects Speak for Themselves in the second-floor galleries. The conversation with curator Florencia Alvarez Pacheco begins at 6 p.m. in the third-floor ballroom. Alvarez Pacheco will be joined by Felicity Scott and Mark Wasiuta, co-directors of the Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices in Architecture (CCCP) program, at Columbia University, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP).

Mining the Pidgeon Audio Visual (PAV) series—a collection of over 200 mail order tape/slide talks initiated in 1979 by renowned editor of London-based magazine Architectural Design, Monica Pidgeon—this exhibition features a selection of the talks and accompanying slide presentations by leading architects and designers produced between 1979 and 1989. At the Graham, talks by Reyner Banham, Roberto Burle Marx, Charles Correa, Balkrishna V. Doshi, Frank Gehry, Myron Goldsmith, Zaha Hadid, Lawrence Halprin, Kisho Kurokawa, Esther McCoy, Cedric Price, James Wines and Alison Sky (SITE), Alison & Peter Smithson, Stanley Tigerman, and Anne Tyng will be shown in their original format on slide projectors, with synchronized audio accessed on personal mobile devices. Drawing from the archives of Royal Institute of British Architects; the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; and the Graham Foundation—which supported Pidgeon and PAV with a grant in 1983—the exhibition looks at the PAV series as an alternative education platform and a new model for the development and distribution of ideas in architecture and design.

Exits Exist, site-specific supergraphics by San Francisco-based Barbara Stauffacher Solomon (b. 1928) for the Graham Foundation’s Madlener House are also on view throughout the galleries.


Florencia Alvarez Pacheco is an architect and curator who teaches at the School of Architecture, Design and Urbanism at the University of Buenos Aires. She holds a master’s degree in Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices in Architecture from Columbia University, GSAPP. She was assistant exhibitions coordinator at the Arthur Ross Architectural Gallery where she acted as assistant curator for Environmental Communications: Contact HighInformation Fall-Out: Buckminster Fuller’s World GameLes Levine: Bio-Tech Rehearsals, 1965–1975, and cocurator for Every Building in Baghdad: The Rifat Chadirji Archives at the Arab Image Foundation, and Detox USA among other exhibitions. Her work has been exhibited at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Graham Foundation, the Istanbul Design Biennial, and LAXART. Her research focuses on the implications and challenges of diverse techno-pedagogical experiences from the postwar period at the convergence of politics, education, and media.

 

NOTE: The audio component of the Pidgeon Audio Visual installation is only accessible to stream in the galleries through the exhibition's dedicated website on a mobile device. Headphones are required; it is recommended guests bring their own. As needed, headphones can be borrowed at the Graham.

The first-floor galleries and bookshop are accessible via outdoor lift. Please call ahead to make arrangements. The second-floor galleries and the third-floor ballroom, where events are held, are only accessible by stairs.

Masks are strongly encouraged. Visitors to the Graham Foundation understand that there is an inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19 in any public space where people are present. Chicago’s current COVID-19 Community Risk Level is LOW.

For more information on the exhibition, Pidgeon Audio Visual: Architects Speak for Themselves, click here.

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