WEBVTT

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Thank you for that lovely welcome.

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I want to give our camera technician

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a moment to confirm whether

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sound is working [LAUGHTER] before I share these jewels.

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In terms of slides,

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I tend towards minimalism.

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I hope you will enjoy these fairly minimal of slides,

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but I have a lot of information

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I wanted to share with you.

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Also, refer to some notes.

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First, thank you again

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to Sharon for the kind introduction,

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and welcome all of you back to

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Virginia Tech if you're

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returning or if you're here for the first time.

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We hope that this is

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a really memorable visit and experience for you.

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To all of our students who've had

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an opportunity to join us,

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it's a thrill every time we get to work with you.

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As you likely know,

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the IAWA was established in 1985 as a joint partnership

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between the College of Architecture and Urban Studies

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here and the university libraries,

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which has multiple branches of

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which this is one of our favorites.

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We have this ambitious goal to document

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women's contributions to

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the built environment around the world.

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This joint initiative has become, to our estimation,

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what is the largest and

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longest continually operating institution

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of its kind in the world.

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I am here on behalf of

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the Special Collections Department and as

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a representative now to you of the archival profession,

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I want to take some time to explain what we do and

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encourage you to join us in our work.

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This would be behind

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the scenes discussion of

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the things that we do in our field.

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What do archivists do?

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Why do people confuse us with architects?

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I don't know if you know how common that is

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when I tell people on a train that I'm an archivist,

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they go, "Oh, an architect.

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That's great. Oh, an anarchist?"

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[LAUGHTER] Maybe.

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[LAUGHTER] Archival science is a global profession.

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We manage documentary history,

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electronic records,

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and other materials of enduring historical value.

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We're sort of cousins to librarians and museum curators.

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We document and preserve evidence of

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historic events in institutions and people.

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We work mostly with evidentiary history,

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sometimes material and visual history as well.

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But our primary job is to protect, and preserve,

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and provide access to

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these materials for future generations.

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Our materials in the IAWA

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used for a multitude of purposes.

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We work, as I mentioned,

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in conjunction with some related fields: librarians,

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museum curators, historians, records managers.

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But our expertise is rather

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unique because we tend to be tied to documents,

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and we have accordingly

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some advanced degrees of

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practice and certifications that we pursue.

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The terminal degree in

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the United States and many other countries in

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the Western world is a master's degree

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in library science with an archive specialization.

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When we're in school, similar to

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what you did in your programs,

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we study a broad range of topics on theory

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and application related to information ethics,

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intellectual property concerns, preservation,

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chemical conservation of paper and film materials,

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digital forensics,

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where if you accidentally erase your hard drive,

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we can sometimes help you find

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the things that aren't really erased,

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and technology at writ large.

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We also generally have subject expertise in other fields.

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My personal background is actually in

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public policy and international relations.

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Prior to that, when I began my college career,

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I was actually in engineering school.

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I went through several years of mathematics.

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I love science and drafting classes and got mysteriously

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diverted into history and public policy,

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much to the frustration of my family,

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which is all engineers for many generations back.

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My work with the IAWA is particularly satisfying to

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me because I can combine this important work in archives,

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which is really essential in the realization of

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our human rights and our shared history

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with my early passion for design.

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I know that those drafting classes I

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took are not in vain entirely.

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I connect with IAWA on another personnel level.

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I was very fortunate as a child to have

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an abundance of educated women role models in my family.

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My great aunt, for example,

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was one of the first women licensed to

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practice engineering in the state of Texas.

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She is still working in her 90s

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because she's very stubborn and likes to work,

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which I'm sure is familiar to some of you.

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As I grow up with all these women around me,

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I really did believe that I could be

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anything that I wanted to be, including an architect.

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Although, ultimately, my career

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took me in a different direction.

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But that was not the case for a lot

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of the women who preceded me.

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My grandmother, she was raised in Texas.

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She postponed her college education and

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her training as a classical pianist to be a homemaker,

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which is, again, a common tale.

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My grandparents divorce 20 years after that,

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as my mother was entering high school.

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My grandmother started entering the workforce.

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She owned a business. She worked as

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a drafter for NASA in Houston.

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My mother's family is from Houston,

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friends with Clear Lake area,

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and she loved drafting.

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She had a brilliant, creative mind.

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She was very spatially oriented.

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She did this for years.

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I'm sure she was one of many uncredited women drafters

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and mathematicians working at

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NASA in these early days, in the early '60s.

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She never believed that she could be an architect.

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It was not an option that even crossed her mind,

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and I'm not sure at the time there were

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schools in Texas that would've accepted

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her into their programs in the early '40s.

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Suddenly, she did not

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have the support of the men in our family.

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My mother, in turn,

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she dreamed of being an architect her entire childhood.

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She is actually obsessed with

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Buckminster Fuller and geodesic domes,

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and was constantly doodling them on everything,

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and she still does, many years later.

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[LAUGHTER] One day, when she was a junior in high school,

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a guidance counselor told her,

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"Nobody will hire a woman as an architect.

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You can maybe be a drafter,

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but not an architect."

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She said, "Okay, I understand," and she

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went to University of Washington

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and got her degree in oceanography.

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Now, she is a teacher

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and instructor in science education,

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and she still designs,

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and draws, and doodles,

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and makes art, makes textiles, makes pottery.

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She has a photography business on the side,

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so that expression is still part of her life.

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But that was actually not a story I

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heard until I started working here.

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I didn't know my grandmother had been a drafter for

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NASA until I started working here, which is typical.

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I think there are so many hidden stories in our lives

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that aren't uncovered until

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someone knows that we want to hear them.

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Today, and every day,

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and my work with IAWA,

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I have this phenomenal good fortune to be surrounded with

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these global role models and

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collaborators who proved that

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women can not only be architects,

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they can be exceptional architects,

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they can contribute something really

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essential to their communities,

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to the practice, and endure hardships that

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are very difficult for me as

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a woman in my 30s to imagine.

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That's a little bit of my personal background.

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Let's talk about how architectural records are unique.

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When I'm talking about records,

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I'm speaking of the documentary or

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material evidence of your practice.

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So the kinds of things that architects produce from

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the very beginning design concept

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through their communication

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with clients and patrons

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until the model is actually finalized,

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and sometimes even to the point of a contract document.

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Although typically your contract document should

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stay with your lawyers or your records managers.

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They would not come to the archives until say

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that document was superseded or the building came down.

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We collect materials of

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historical significance that are not actively in use,

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but how something essential to teach

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to historians and to writers,

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to students of gender history,

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labor history, architectural history.

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These are what we consider

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the core functions of archives in

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our field and our professional standards to appraise,

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preserve, arrange, and describe.

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An archives unlike other professions,

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to appraise means to assess something's historical value.

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We don't worry as much about monetary value,

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so we're not appraising things like antiques,

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but trying to assess how

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likely it is that this will be of interests

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to historians in the future and what it

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means in the context of

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the other materials it comes to us with.

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Basically everything we have we want to be used,

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so we don't collect things that are unlikely to be used.

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To preserve something in our context means to physically

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stabilize the materials on a chemical compound level,

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keeping them safe from damage and daft,

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and water, fire, rain, pests.

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We arrange materials both physically and

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intellectually to reflect how they were originally used,

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and we bring out these natural relationships

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between the materials for the benefits of researchers.

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If you imagine a box of recipes,

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for example, that's passed down in your family,

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the way that the cook may order her recipes tells

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us something about how she

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uses them and the significance they have.

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For example, family recipes she

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inherited might be together in

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one section and magazine clippings that

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her sister sent her might be in another section,

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perhaps her favorite recipes are in the very front.

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They might be alphabetized.

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They might be arranged by ingredients.

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They might be tossed into a box in no particular order

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and she just finds them via

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serendipity when she reaches her hand on.

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With some system exist,

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we try to preserve that original order

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and create some guide for researchers to follow.

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Sometimes multiple arrangements exist.

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The physical order of

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the materials in their preservation boxes

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is in contrast to

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a separate intellectual order presented online,

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and this is particularly common as I'll tell you

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more in a few minutes with digital materials.

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There might be a way functionally that you

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work with the files on your hard drive.

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The way we point

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researchers to it might be a little different.

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For example, we might have

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all of the records for one project

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intellectually grouped together so that

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if a researcher says,

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I want to look at this house, all the connections,

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all the materials related to this house,

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they don't have to go search through

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your entire hard drive file structure,

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we can tell them where everything is.

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It's analogous to the relationship between

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a traditional topographical map

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and a schematic transit map.

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These are just two ways of presenting

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information to users with different needs,

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and presenting information to users with

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different needs is the core of our profession.

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When we talk about describing archives,

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we mean we're providing

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specific and detailed information about

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a collection to help researchers

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find what they're looking for,

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but we do not do interpretation.

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Our job is to create just enough breadcrumbs to help you,

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the researcher, feel interested

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and help you find what you're looking for.

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We use something called a finding aid,

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which is a mixture between an inventory and

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a manual and a map to

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all the information contained in the files.

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They describe who created the collection,

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when it was created in time,

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what kinds of items it contains,

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whether it's maybe audio visual materials,

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newspaper clippings, project records,

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maybe it has some models,

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how the collection relates to the real-world events,

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people, and institutions around it.

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These are the kinds of breadcrumbs that

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you'll find if you open a finding aid.

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Architectural records present

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several unique challenges to archivists,

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which I'm sure you may have experienced if you ever

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go back to look in some of your old project files,

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especially if you've been in

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the profession in the time that we

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have advanced from analog to primarily digital practices.

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The anecdote I often share here is,

00:12:42.250 --> 00:12:43.390
when I was in school,

00:12:43.390 --> 00:12:48.610
we still used the 2002 edition of AutoCAD,

00:12:48.610 --> 00:12:50.290
which meant that you could only open

00:12:50.290 --> 00:12:52.120
the files that I created in

00:12:52.120 --> 00:12:53.725
a 2002 edition of

00:12:53.725 --> 00:12:56.770
AutoCAD on a computer with a floppy drive.

00:12:56.770 --> 00:13:00.490
This is a very common dilemma for us in archives.

00:13:00.490 --> 00:13:02.515
Architects also use

00:13:02.515 --> 00:13:04.975
highly technical and specific terminology

00:13:04.975 --> 00:13:06.235
to describe their work,

00:13:06.235 --> 00:13:07.570
and an individual architect

00:13:07.570 --> 00:13:09.790
has a rich and vast network of

00:13:09.790 --> 00:13:11.590
relationship with colleagues and

00:13:11.590 --> 00:13:13.930
mentors and clients and firms.

00:13:13.930 --> 00:13:15.760
For physical materials,

00:13:15.760 --> 00:13:18.970
the largest challenge for us are the,

00:13:18.970 --> 00:13:20.560
first of all, physical formats.

00:13:20.560 --> 00:13:22.720
So the size of your architectural drawings

00:13:22.720 --> 00:13:23.905
and reproductions

00:13:23.905 --> 00:13:25.780
and the diverse kinds of media

00:13:25.780 --> 00:13:27.985
that a design project might produce.

00:13:27.985 --> 00:13:32.200
All of these require special preservation expectations,

00:13:32.200 --> 00:13:35.410
expertise, and storage technology.

00:13:35.410 --> 00:13:37.300
In addition to these challenges,

00:13:37.300 --> 00:13:39.505
when we get into the electronic records,

00:13:39.505 --> 00:13:41.800
it becomes even more complex.

00:13:41.800 --> 00:13:44.560
The privacy issues that might come up with

00:13:44.560 --> 00:13:47.230
your client records oftentimes,

00:13:47.230 --> 00:13:51.670
as you have probably seen in your CAD and BIM programs,

00:13:51.670 --> 00:13:55.525
there are multiple reference files that vendors provide,

00:13:55.525 --> 00:13:56.830
which may be linked into

00:13:56.830 --> 00:13:59.665
your residential designs, for example.

00:13:59.665 --> 00:14:01.960
That file in and of itself

00:14:01.960 --> 00:14:04.210
can prizes not only your design,

00:14:04.210 --> 00:14:05.530
but all the references to

00:14:05.530 --> 00:14:07.150
these other systems and programs,

00:14:07.150 --> 00:14:08.845
which are of course proprietary,

00:14:08.845 --> 00:14:10.480
which means that the company that

00:14:10.480 --> 00:14:12.280
made the windows that you used in

00:14:12.280 --> 00:14:14.320
your design doesn't want to share with

00:14:14.320 --> 00:14:17.215
us necessarily their specifications.

00:14:17.215 --> 00:14:20.260
So to provide a complete picture to the researchers,

00:14:20.260 --> 00:14:22.300
we have to get a little created.

00:14:22.300 --> 00:14:24.430
Also, of course, there's the issue of

00:14:24.430 --> 00:14:27.730
outdated hardware and proprietary software.

00:14:27.730 --> 00:14:30.760
Almost everything that architects have

00:14:30.760 --> 00:14:32.230
traditionally used for

00:14:32.230 --> 00:14:34.990
design analysis is either homegrown.

00:14:34.990 --> 00:14:37.090
They've made it inside their own firm and

00:14:37.090 --> 00:14:39.190
may or may not have documented that code,

00:14:39.190 --> 00:14:41.680
or it is a proprietary system

00:14:41.680 --> 00:14:44.065
like something produced by Autodesk.

00:14:44.065 --> 00:14:47.545
We are working, many of us in my profession,

00:14:47.545 --> 00:14:51.310
with these companies to create some kind of

00:14:51.310 --> 00:14:53.080
standards that will allow us to

00:14:53.080 --> 00:14:55.210
make these records open access.

00:14:55.210 --> 00:14:57.025
We've not succeeded yet.

00:14:57.025 --> 00:14:58.900
They are, as you can understand,

00:14:58.900 --> 00:15:00.550
really hesitant to release

00:15:00.550 --> 00:15:02.965
their creative control on some of these programs.

00:15:02.965 --> 00:15:05.575
This is an area where my field

00:15:05.575 --> 00:15:09.290
and your field can hopefully partner in the future.

00:15:13.140 --> 00:15:17.630
How do our professions work together?

00:15:17.670 --> 00:15:20.860
We rely on architects to learn how

00:15:20.860 --> 00:15:23.665
you describe and arrange your own work.

00:15:23.665 --> 00:15:25.090
As I mentioned before,

00:15:25.090 --> 00:15:27.325
what does your recipe box look like?

00:15:27.325 --> 00:15:28.685
If you're still living,

00:15:28.685 --> 00:15:30.620
if you're able to talk to us and willing,

00:15:30.620 --> 00:15:32.000
what can you tell us about

00:15:32.000 --> 00:15:35.270
the significance of these items and how you arrange them?

00:15:35.270 --> 00:15:37.130
We especially want to know

00:15:37.130 --> 00:15:39.410
how architects use these materials.

00:15:39.410 --> 00:15:41.630
Not only the materials that you created in

00:15:41.630 --> 00:15:44.044
the course of your career,

00:15:44.044 --> 00:15:46.010
but how you might use or reference

00:15:46.010 --> 00:15:48.915
visual materials that other people have created.

00:15:48.915 --> 00:15:50.570
How do you find meaning in

00:15:50.570 --> 00:15:52.565
the work of other professionals,

00:15:52.565 --> 00:15:55.550
in the connections that they leave traces out in

00:15:55.550 --> 00:15:56.960
their correspondence or in

00:15:56.960 --> 00:15:59.195
the evolution of their creative process.

00:15:59.195 --> 00:16:01.610
This information helps us to establish

00:16:01.610 --> 00:16:04.430
best practices for describing these materials.

00:16:04.430 --> 00:16:07.400
We have standardized vocabularies and tools.

00:16:07.400 --> 00:16:08.960
For example, the Getty

00:16:08.960 --> 00:16:11.360
Museum's Art & Architecture Thesaurus,

00:16:11.360 --> 00:16:14.449
which come from the practice of artists and architects.

00:16:14.449 --> 00:16:15.860
Because at the end of the day,

00:16:15.860 --> 00:16:18.830
we want to make sure that the words we use to describe

00:16:18.830 --> 00:16:22.425
things are the words you would use to search for them.

00:16:22.425 --> 00:16:24.920
It also helps us in speaking with

00:16:24.920 --> 00:16:26.990
you to arrange architectural materials

00:16:26.990 --> 00:16:28.760
and formats that make sense to form

00:16:28.760 --> 00:16:31.385
our architects and architectural researchers.

00:16:31.385 --> 00:16:33.155
One strategy that makes

00:16:33.155 --> 00:16:35.510
architectural records unique is that we tend to

00:16:35.510 --> 00:16:40.610
group project records according to a single project.

00:16:41.710 --> 00:16:45.895
In a traditional, say, historians collection,

00:16:45.895 --> 00:16:48.849
we might have all of their correspondence together,

00:16:48.849 --> 00:16:50.710
all of their class notes together,

00:16:50.710 --> 00:16:53.530
all of their book manuscripts together back to back.

00:16:53.530 --> 00:16:55.420
But in the course of a single project,

00:16:55.420 --> 00:16:58.765
many different types and formats of records are created.

00:16:58.765 --> 00:17:01.240
It's less common for a researcher to say,

00:17:01.240 --> 00:17:05.005
I would love to see all of your audio cassette tapes.

00:17:05.005 --> 00:17:06.625
It's more likely they'll say,

00:17:06.625 --> 00:17:10.030
I would love to see and hear all of

00:17:10.030 --> 00:17:11.785
the presentations someone made

00:17:11.785 --> 00:17:13.705
about this particular project,

00:17:13.705 --> 00:17:15.310
because there may be writing

00:17:15.310 --> 00:17:18.350
a monograph on that house or on that building.

00:17:22.050 --> 00:17:26.575
Let's see. As I mentioned also a moment ago,

00:17:26.575 --> 00:17:30.400
an area of great potential for future collaboration is in

00:17:30.400 --> 00:17:32.230
the preservation of computer aided

00:17:32.230 --> 00:17:34.990
drafting and building information modeling,

00:17:34.990 --> 00:17:38.485
materials programs, deliverables, outcomes.

00:17:38.485 --> 00:17:43.375
This is an area where archivists need to speak more with

00:17:43.375 --> 00:17:45.820
architects and listen to you and hear how you're

00:17:45.820 --> 00:17:47.380
using these different programs

00:17:47.380 --> 00:17:48.910
in the course of your design.

00:17:48.910 --> 00:17:51.190
Because of course we understand

00:17:51.190 --> 00:17:54.245
that something might start in Revit,

00:17:54.245 --> 00:17:56.680
and then the next phase it gets passed on to

00:17:56.680 --> 00:17:58.920
another designer who was working in AutoCAD,

00:17:58.920 --> 00:18:00.640
and the next phase it gets passed on to

00:18:00.640 --> 00:18:02.980
another designer who's working in Grasshopper,

00:18:02.980 --> 00:18:05.065
and these are all in multiple countries.

00:18:05.065 --> 00:18:07.300
How are these interacting and

00:18:07.300 --> 00:18:09.515
what is the final product you have at the end,

00:18:09.515 --> 00:18:11.210
not only for your firm or

00:18:11.210 --> 00:18:13.220
for your practice to look back on,

00:18:13.220 --> 00:18:16.090
but for the client.

00:18:16.090 --> 00:18:21.530
This is a really exciting venture

00:18:21.530 --> 00:18:23.150
for us to work on in the future

00:18:23.150 --> 00:18:25.700
because we have great company,

00:18:25.700 --> 00:18:27.650
where we're working alongside a lot

00:18:27.650 --> 00:18:29.945
of aerospace engineers and

00:18:29.945 --> 00:18:31.760
other manufacturing groups who used

00:18:31.760 --> 00:18:36.049
similar design practices in the creation of these works.

00:18:36.049 --> 00:18:38.240
Just maybe if we work together,

00:18:38.240 --> 00:18:41.210
one from the preservation access a new

00:18:41.210 --> 00:18:44.465
from the production side,

00:18:44.465 --> 00:18:46.790
we can create better programs

00:18:46.790 --> 00:18:49.589
that will serve both of our purposes.

00:18:51.180 --> 00:18:53.620
What happens to a collection in

00:18:53.620 --> 00:18:56.960
the archives and what do we mean by collection?

00:18:57.240 --> 00:19:01.390
Our field is based on

00:19:01.390 --> 00:19:05.020
a profession of documentary history

00:19:05.020 --> 00:19:06.295
that comes out of France,

00:19:06.295 --> 00:19:08.260
and Holland, and England,

00:19:08.260 --> 00:19:10.915
So we use a concept called the fonds.

00:19:10.915 --> 00:19:13.300
F-O-N-D-S, fonds.

00:19:13.300 --> 00:19:17.814
This means the corpus of records that you create,

00:19:17.814 --> 00:19:19.810
that one entity whether it's a person,

00:19:19.810 --> 00:19:21.190
a family, or a firm,

00:19:21.190 --> 00:19:24.385
or an office on campus department,

00:19:24.385 --> 00:19:27.310
one author, one collection.

00:19:27.310 --> 00:19:32.410
If, for example, Paula wanted to donate

00:19:32.410 --> 00:19:34.720
her collection and then

00:19:34.720 --> 00:19:38.994
Chiron donated to us the Paula fan club collection,

00:19:38.994 --> 00:19:41.200
we would not put those together.

00:19:41.200 --> 00:19:43.990
They're two separate authors, two separate sources.

00:19:43.990 --> 00:19:45.760
We would of course point researchers back and

00:19:45.760 --> 00:19:47.950
forth to say if you are interested in Paula,

00:19:47.950 --> 00:19:50.110
you probably want to know more about her fan club.

00:19:50.110 --> 00:19:54.355
[LAUGHTER] But we keep them apart by author.

00:19:54.355 --> 00:19:57.430
That is one of the core principles of archives.

00:19:57.430 --> 00:20:00.310
The other one, as I mentioned in passing earlier,

00:20:00.310 --> 00:20:03.580
is respecting the original arrangement of the creator.

00:20:03.580 --> 00:20:05.350
It was not always the case.

00:20:05.350 --> 00:20:08.260
Archivists, historians sometimes like

00:20:08.260 --> 00:20:11.890
to cherry-pick records and

00:20:11.890 --> 00:20:14.080
arrange them in a way they find most beautiful,

00:20:14.080 --> 00:20:15.400
which is great for them,

00:20:15.400 --> 00:20:17.410
but also really deconstructs

00:20:17.410 --> 00:20:18.670
that entire corpus of

00:20:18.670 --> 00:20:20.665
records from its natural environment,

00:20:20.665 --> 00:20:23.155
which is also something we're very concerned about.

00:20:23.155 --> 00:20:26.290
Collection, a single corpus of materials from

00:20:26.290 --> 00:20:30.205
a single source that documents the course of your career,

00:20:30.205 --> 00:20:32.185
or the course of a project,

00:20:32.185 --> 00:20:34.315
or the course of a department's history.

00:20:34.315 --> 00:20:35.545
We're usually looking in

00:20:35.545 --> 00:20:38.110
aggregate at a pretty large scale.

00:20:38.110 --> 00:20:40.810
So if you had multiple projects and you

00:20:40.810 --> 00:20:44.065
sent all of your project files to us project by project,

00:20:44.065 --> 00:20:46.000
we probably would combine them

00:20:46.000 --> 00:20:48.265
for researchers to be able to view across.

00:20:48.265 --> 00:20:51.250
We collect historically significant materials

00:20:51.250 --> 00:20:53.470
that document the process of creation.

00:20:53.470 --> 00:20:55.900
These are things like drawings and sketches,

00:20:55.900 --> 00:20:59.395
project files, clip files, presentation boards,

00:20:59.395 --> 00:21:01.750
photographs, correspondence, maybe some

00:21:01.750 --> 00:21:04.330
school assignments that were very meaningful to you,

00:21:04.330 --> 00:21:06.700
office records, research files.

00:21:06.700 --> 00:21:09.070
The things we don't collect generally are

00:21:09.070 --> 00:21:11.980
things that are protected by law,

00:21:11.980 --> 00:21:14.350
so please don't send your tax returns.

00:21:14.350 --> 00:21:16.540
Those are things we would generally return to you

00:21:16.540 --> 00:21:19.030
unless you had a compelling reason why they

00:21:19.030 --> 00:21:20.560
were a compelling part of

00:21:20.560 --> 00:21:24.895
your history that researchers must absolutely see.

00:21:24.895 --> 00:21:27.760
Historical significance in our context

00:21:27.760 --> 00:21:30.715
does not always mean big each historical.

00:21:30.715 --> 00:21:33.760
We're not idolizing the

00:21:33.760 --> 00:21:35.170
Frank Lloyd Wright's of the world.

00:21:35.170 --> 00:21:37.690
There are already institutions that do that.

00:21:37.690 --> 00:21:39.790
We are concerned with

00:21:39.790 --> 00:21:44.470
history as it's written in the lives of individuals.

00:21:44.470 --> 00:21:48.400
We do have many women reflected in our collections,

00:21:48.400 --> 00:21:51.850
who have one major academic and architectural prizes,

00:21:51.850 --> 00:21:55.030
who have worked in

00:21:55.030 --> 00:21:57.399
their country as the first woman with a license,

00:21:57.399 --> 00:21:59.515
or who have broken ground in some way,

00:21:59.515 --> 00:22:02.695
pioneering women architects who were neglected for, say,

00:22:02.695 --> 00:22:06.955
the first 100 years of the professions history

00:22:06.955 --> 00:22:09.729
in the United States especially.

00:22:09.729 --> 00:22:13.284
But that does not mean that you

00:22:13.284 --> 00:22:15.670
individually even students don't

00:22:15.670 --> 00:22:17.980
have something historical to contribute.

00:22:17.980 --> 00:22:21.219
We're thinking 50, 60, 100,

00:22:21.219 --> 00:22:25.330
500 years in the future when people want to know how did

00:22:25.330 --> 00:22:30.115
design thinking evolve in 2019 or in the early 2000s.

00:22:30.115 --> 00:22:32.530
They won't necessarily learn that

00:22:32.530 --> 00:22:34.989
just from looking at the projects of star architects,

00:22:34.989 --> 00:22:36.670
but from looking at the conversations

00:22:36.670 --> 00:22:40.255
happening in little eddies all throughout the field.

00:22:40.255 --> 00:22:44.170
That's why one of the reasons the women in

00:22:44.170 --> 00:22:45.550
our collection are not

00:22:45.550 --> 00:22:48.055
necessarily women whose name you know.

00:22:48.055 --> 00:22:51.235
The other reason is that of course as in many,

00:22:51.235 --> 00:22:54.010
many disciplines, women have been marginalized,

00:22:54.010 --> 00:22:55.450
women, people of color,

00:22:55.450 --> 00:22:57.385
other minority groups from

00:22:57.385 --> 00:23:00.235
the telling of our architectural history.

00:23:00.235 --> 00:23:02.530
That is one of the things that this

00:23:02.530 --> 00:23:05.530
collective was created to overcome.

00:23:05.530 --> 00:23:08.425
Here's a typical path or experience.

00:23:08.425 --> 00:23:11.170
A woman will contact

00:23:11.170 --> 00:23:14.230
us or maybe her family will contact us.

00:23:14.230 --> 00:23:16.030
Maybe the board has heard

00:23:16.030 --> 00:23:18.070
about her or some of her colleagues will say

00:23:18.070 --> 00:23:19.960
this woman is just incredible and she

00:23:19.960 --> 00:23:22.705
needs to be part of this permanent documentary history.

00:23:22.705 --> 00:23:24.730
We'll have a conversation with her about

00:23:24.730 --> 00:23:26.920
the process of donating her materials,

00:23:26.920 --> 00:23:28.450
which sometimes means we

00:23:28.450 --> 00:23:30.610
literally drive to her house and we tour

00:23:30.610 --> 00:23:32.200
her studio and we pack

00:23:32.200 --> 00:23:35.000
everything up in boxes and we drive it home.

00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:38.400
Sometimes we contact professionals directly

00:23:38.400 --> 00:23:41.310
to say you may not have known that we exist,

00:23:41.310 --> 00:23:42.510
but your history is really

00:23:42.510 --> 00:23:44.310
important and we want you to know that

00:23:44.310 --> 00:23:48.470
your history and your legacy has a home at Virginia Tech.

00:23:48.470 --> 00:23:50.350
Once a donor has expressed

00:23:50.350 --> 00:23:52.060
interest in sending her materials,

00:23:52.060 --> 00:23:54.460
we will hold interviews with them to

00:23:54.460 --> 00:23:57.100
basically assess what kinds of things they have,

00:23:57.100 --> 00:23:58.780
what kind of preservation or

00:23:58.780 --> 00:24:00.730
conservation needs there might be,

00:24:00.730 --> 00:24:02.440
what kind of legal questions or

00:24:02.440 --> 00:24:05.185
intellectual property questions might emerge,

00:24:05.185 --> 00:24:07.420
and we'll form a common agreement.

00:24:07.420 --> 00:24:10.960
We'll sign a contract with them to transfer

00:24:10.960 --> 00:24:12.310
the materials physically to

00:24:12.310 --> 00:24:13.420
Virginia Tech and where

00:24:13.420 --> 00:24:15.370
possible to intellectual property,

00:24:15.370 --> 00:24:19.300
which is very, very complicated question in this field.

00:24:19.300 --> 00:24:21.430
We'll document exactly how

00:24:21.430 --> 00:24:23.830
everything is arranged at the moment we receive it and

00:24:23.830 --> 00:24:25.150
what kind of condition it is

00:24:25.150 --> 00:24:29.020
in and where rights issues might emerge.

00:24:29.020 --> 00:24:32.740
Then once we have all this information,

00:24:32.740 --> 00:24:34.360
everything has been transferred.

00:24:34.360 --> 00:24:37.000
We've confirmed, yes, you sent us 20 boxes,

00:24:37.000 --> 00:24:39.055
we received 20 boxes.

00:24:39.055 --> 00:24:41.440
We will start to

00:24:41.440 --> 00:24:45.265
arrange and preserve and describe these materials.

00:24:45.265 --> 00:24:48.040
At this point, some donors choose to include

00:24:48.040 --> 00:24:50.260
a financial contribution to

00:24:50.260 --> 00:24:52.540
support the processing of their collections.

00:24:52.540 --> 00:24:54.865
We are very fortunate at Virginia Tech

00:24:54.865 --> 00:24:57.760
in the university libraries to be rather well-funded.

00:24:57.760 --> 00:24:59.095
We have a good staff.

00:24:59.095 --> 00:25:01.000
I'm the only full-time staff

00:25:01.000 --> 00:25:03.220
that works with IAWA materials.

00:25:03.220 --> 00:25:05.290
A lot of the people I have helping

00:25:05.290 --> 00:25:08.275
me are students and graduate students.

00:25:08.275 --> 00:25:09.730
If any students or

00:25:09.730 --> 00:25:12.445
graduate students in here are looking for jobs,

00:25:12.445 --> 00:25:14.680
then please let your instructors

00:25:14.680 --> 00:25:16.570
know and they will pass you my way.

00:25:16.570 --> 00:25:20.860
Advisors often are a key part of this.

00:25:20.860 --> 00:25:22.629
This is our board of directors,

00:25:22.629 --> 00:25:24.940
the IAWA center advisors who have

00:25:24.940 --> 00:25:28.060
a broad network of colleagues across the world

00:25:28.060 --> 00:25:30.850
and who also have a great grasp on which

00:25:30.850 --> 00:25:34.270
women are really making waves right now on the field.

00:25:34.270 --> 00:25:37.120
When we go through this collection for the first review,

00:25:37.120 --> 00:25:41.455
the things we're looking for are bugs and pests,

00:25:41.455 --> 00:25:42.670
are there a lot of

00:25:42.670 --> 00:25:45.925
personal documents that got left in this box?

00:25:45.925 --> 00:25:48.849
Especially if it's the transition

00:25:48.849 --> 00:25:49.960
where someone clears out

00:25:49.960 --> 00:25:52.630
their practice office by just dumping things in a box

00:25:52.630 --> 00:25:53.800
and shipping it so they

00:25:53.800 --> 00:25:55.510
never have to think about it again.

00:25:55.510 --> 00:25:57.070
We'll make sure that we catch things like

00:25:57.070 --> 00:25:59.230
social security numbers and

00:25:59.230 --> 00:26:00.520
other legal documents so that

00:26:00.520 --> 00:26:02.275
we can return or shred them.

00:26:02.275 --> 00:26:03.760
Then we'll take the information

00:26:03.760 --> 00:26:05.140
from that initial assessment,

00:26:05.140 --> 00:26:07.150
and sometimes in conversation with the donor,

00:26:07.150 --> 00:26:08.770
we'll say this is the

00:26:08.770 --> 00:26:11.050
organizational structure we're seeing,

00:26:11.050 --> 00:26:12.550
the trends and the information.

00:26:12.550 --> 00:26:14.260
Does that translate to the way you

00:26:14.260 --> 00:26:16.555
understood that you use these materials?

00:26:16.555 --> 00:26:18.940
We'll create some roadmap along

00:26:18.940 --> 00:26:22.210
those guidelines for researchers to find.

00:26:22.210 --> 00:26:24.310
Then we'll write a finding aid,

00:26:24.310 --> 00:26:25.990
which is very minimal.

00:26:25.990 --> 00:26:30.220
Our contribution might be 1,000-2,000 words.

00:26:30.220 --> 00:26:31.990
Just a brief biographical sketch,

00:26:31.990 --> 00:26:33.160
something to catch the eye of

00:26:33.160 --> 00:26:35.140
the researchers as they're browsing through,

00:26:35.140 --> 00:26:37.180
and then usually a folder level

00:26:37.180 --> 00:26:39.520
inventory of the materials.

00:26:39.520 --> 00:26:42.595
This is something we have available online.

00:26:42.595 --> 00:26:44.290
It's searched in Google.

00:26:44.290 --> 00:26:45.880
It's Google indexed,

00:26:45.880 --> 00:26:47.980
and that's our most people find a way

00:26:47.980 --> 00:26:50.080
to the IAWA in

00:26:50.080 --> 00:26:52.060
the course of their international research.

00:26:52.060 --> 00:26:55.645
We are also working to digitize a lot of our materials,

00:26:55.645 --> 00:26:57.850
and that is in hopes to make

00:26:57.850 --> 00:27:01.045
the IAWA more accessible to people around the world.

00:27:01.045 --> 00:27:03.340
As you have likely experienced recently,

00:27:03.340 --> 00:27:06.760
Blacksburg is not the easiest place to travel to and we

00:27:06.760 --> 00:27:08.560
don't want that to be the limiting factor and

00:27:08.560 --> 00:27:11.360
who gets to see these incredible records.

00:27:12.120 --> 00:27:14.635
Just to recap here.

00:27:14.635 --> 00:27:16.180
We speak with you,

00:27:16.180 --> 00:27:17.680
we appraise your work,

00:27:17.680 --> 00:27:19.240
we sign a contract with you,

00:27:19.240 --> 00:27:20.845
the materials come to us,

00:27:20.845 --> 00:27:23.245
and the fun starts from there.

00:27:23.245 --> 00:27:32.650
Fun for us. How can you be involved in this work?

00:27:32.650 --> 00:27:34.855
You can follow us on Facebook

00:27:34.855 --> 00:27:37.060
for updates from the archives team.

00:27:37.060 --> 00:27:38.890
We post a lot of photographs from

00:27:38.890 --> 00:27:42.265
digitization projects that are underway, events.

00:27:42.265 --> 00:27:44.755
Sometimes we find new stories of interests.

00:27:44.755 --> 00:27:47.890
You can follow the IAWA research team,

00:27:47.890 --> 00:27:49.600
which is comprised of

00:27:49.600 --> 00:27:52.600
undergraduate and graduate students on the Instagram,

00:27:52.600 --> 00:27:56.050
which is fantastic account that I highly recommend.

00:27:56.050 --> 00:27:57.700
Absolutely beautiful work.

00:27:57.700 --> 00:28:00.850
You can write your own articles about the archives.

00:28:00.850 --> 00:28:02.890
You can come to us to do research or

00:28:02.890 --> 00:28:05.965
contact us remotely with all kinds of questions.

00:28:05.965 --> 00:28:07.480
You can donate your collections to

00:28:07.480 --> 00:28:09.550
us or you can speak with me or

00:28:09.550 --> 00:28:11.320
any of the board members about people

00:28:11.320 --> 00:28:13.720
that you recommend that we contact.

00:28:13.720 --> 00:28:16.240
It is an endeavor that has been

00:28:16.240 --> 00:28:18.655
underway now for almost 35 years.

00:28:18.655 --> 00:28:22.630
It started with one or two small boxes,

00:28:22.630 --> 00:28:26.950
and now we have over 2,000 cubic feet of materials.

00:28:26.950 --> 00:28:30.175
We grow about 50 cubic feet every year.

00:28:30.175 --> 00:28:34.015
It is a really phenomenal enterprise.

00:28:34.015 --> 00:28:36.370
I hope that you will leave here,

00:28:36.370 --> 00:28:38.260
knowing that Virginia Tech is

00:28:38.260 --> 00:28:40.960
very much a leader and cause is

00:28:40.960 --> 00:28:42.310
very much a leader in

00:28:42.310 --> 00:28:46.105
the documentation of women's contributions to design.

00:28:46.105 --> 00:28:49.450
We work with researchers from truly all around the world,

00:28:49.450 --> 00:28:51.100
which is reflected in part by

00:28:51.100 --> 00:28:53.245
some of our panelists who are here.

00:28:53.245 --> 00:28:55.930
I like to think this is rather a hidden jewel,

00:28:55.930 --> 00:28:58.780
not just in the academic archives,

00:28:58.780 --> 00:29:00.835
but in women's collections in general.

00:29:00.835 --> 00:29:02.680
It is an absolute honor to be

00:29:02.680 --> 00:29:04.900
here speaking with you about

00:29:04.900 --> 00:29:07.270
some processes that may seem really

00:29:07.270 --> 00:29:10.150
arcane and baffling and maybe boring.

00:29:10.150 --> 00:29:12.970
I hope that you have now some seed of

00:29:12.970 --> 00:29:16.089
interest that will bring you to me for questions.

00:29:16.089 --> 00:29:17.410
We love working with students and

00:29:17.410 --> 00:29:20.380
researchers and want to take a moment

00:29:20.380 --> 00:29:22.690
also to thank the IAWA award

00:29:22.690 --> 00:29:25.210
for putting this great symposium together.

00:29:25.210 --> 00:29:44.710
That's it. [APPLAUSE]

00:29:44.710 --> 00:29:45.400
Thanks.

00:29:45.400 --> 00:29:46.450
You don't have to get that on.

00:29:46.450 --> 00:29:47.900
Okay [NOISE] .

00:29:47.900 --> 00:29:51.550
Stick. Yeah. [NOISE] There we go.

00:29:51.550 --> 00:29:53.000
Okay.

00:29:53.000 --> 00:29:54.450
Perfect.

00:29:54.450 --> 00:29:56.630
That's fine.

00:29:56.630 --> 00:29:58.820
I'll use that.

00:29:58.820 --> 00:30:00.280
Thank you.

00:30:00.280 --> 00:30:07.060
Our guest speaker is Dr. Danielle Wilkens who is

00:30:07.060 --> 00:30:14.230
assistant professor at She

00:30:14.230 --> 00:30:15.835
has practice experience in

00:30:15.835 --> 00:30:19.290
design field and public installations in Virginia,

00:30:19.290 --> 00:30:21.585
North Carolina, and London.

00:30:21.585 --> 00:30:23.970
She was the 2016,

00:30:23.970 --> 00:30:25.800
2017 recipient of

00:30:25.800 --> 00:30:28.680
The Society of Architectural Historians [inaudible]

00:30:28.680 --> 00:30:33.750
That's fine. It wasn't too bad.

00:30:33.750 --> 00:30:35.460
[LAUGHTER]

00:30:35.460 --> 00:30:37.840
In her fellowship, she explored Iceland,

00:30:37.840 --> 00:30:40.330
the Faroe Islands, Cuba,

00:30:40.330 --> 00:30:42.790
and Japan to research the impact of

00:30:42.790 --> 00:30:45.535
tourism on cultural heritage sites.

00:30:45.535 --> 00:30:47.830
Please join me in welcoming Dr. Willkens.

00:30:47.830 --> 00:30:52.510
Thank you. Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE] Thank

00:30:52.510 --> 00:30:56.110
you very much for the invitation and for your attendance.

00:30:56.110 --> 00:30:59.410
I won't be speaking on Iceland and the Faroe Islands,

00:30:59.410 --> 00:31:02.950
Cuba, Japan, sorry. Maybe some other time.

00:31:02.950 --> 00:31:04.810
But it's a different vein of

00:31:04.810 --> 00:31:09.220
research that is based on uncovering the stories

00:31:09.220 --> 00:31:10.750
behind two of arguably

00:31:10.750 --> 00:31:12.940
the most famous architects for

00:31:12.940 --> 00:31:16.315
the respective countries in particular eras.

00:31:16.315 --> 00:31:20.665
It's what I've termed the Transatlantic Design Network.

00:31:20.665 --> 00:31:24.640
This idea of collaborative networks of patriots, orators,

00:31:24.640 --> 00:31:26.635
farmers, lawyers and botanists

00:31:26.635 --> 00:31:28.915
fueled the foundation of the United States.

00:31:28.915 --> 00:31:30.340
However, little research has

00:31:30.340 --> 00:31:32.110
actually been conducted on how

00:31:32.110 --> 00:31:35.125
those networks and interdisciplinary circles

00:31:35.125 --> 00:31:37.135
were shaping the built environment.

00:31:37.135 --> 00:31:40.780
My hope was to move away from this vast separation.

00:31:40.780 --> 00:31:43.615
It was known as the Western Ocean at that point of time,

00:31:43.615 --> 00:31:45.010
really giving you a sense of

00:31:45.010 --> 00:31:46.810
this Eurocentric view and that

00:31:46.810 --> 00:31:48.999
everything that America was doing was a copyist

00:31:48.999 --> 00:31:52.450
approach to architecture, and also moving away from

00:31:52.450 --> 00:31:56.930
the concept of the autonomous, miraculous inventor.

00:31:57.030 --> 00:32:01.900
This concept is based on an evaluation of

00:32:01.900 --> 00:32:04.090
Monticello by Thomas Jefferson and Sir

00:32:04.090 --> 00:32:07.645
John Soane's Museum in London.

00:32:07.645 --> 00:32:09.610
The first question was

00:32:09.610 --> 00:32:12.325
whether Jefferson and Soane ever met,

00:32:12.325 --> 00:32:14.890
which to spoil the surprise right away,

00:32:14.890 --> 00:32:17.110
so far is a no.

00:32:17.110 --> 00:32:20.140
They were only separated by a decade,

00:32:20.140 --> 00:32:22.870
so fairly close contemporaries,

00:32:22.870 --> 00:32:24.460
but they were only in the same country

00:32:24.460 --> 00:32:26.320
for very brief period of time.

00:32:26.320 --> 00:32:27.610
That's when Jefferson took

00:32:27.610 --> 00:32:29.770
a very short trip to London when he was serving as

00:32:29.770 --> 00:32:33.550
Minister to France between 1784 and 1789,

00:32:33.550 --> 00:32:35.155
so just a two month window.

00:32:35.155 --> 00:32:37.450
Soane wasn't quite up to speed on his practice.

00:32:37.450 --> 00:32:38.500
He had not yet started his

00:32:38.500 --> 00:32:40.825
house museum at that point in time.

00:32:40.825 --> 00:32:43.390
But there were some similarities

00:32:43.390 --> 00:32:44.770
within their theories and

00:32:44.770 --> 00:32:46.240
their practice and their approach to

00:32:46.240 --> 00:32:49.614
education that I was really interested in pursuing.

00:32:49.614 --> 00:32:51.880
Even though the research supports this claim

00:32:51.880 --> 00:32:53.725
that Jefferson and Soane never met,

00:32:53.725 --> 00:32:56.200
it started to reveal

00:32:56.200 --> 00:32:58.930
a previously unexplored network

00:32:58.930 --> 00:33:01.240
of globally interconnected figures,

00:33:01.240 --> 00:33:04.195
many of which were previously overlooked women.

00:33:04.195 --> 00:33:06.655
They were at the helm helping

00:33:06.655 --> 00:33:08.170
these designers and serving as

00:33:08.170 --> 00:33:10.570
their eyes on Continental Europe.

00:33:10.570 --> 00:33:14.470
This can be a new way of understanding the homes and also

00:33:14.470 --> 00:33:16.495
understanding these

00:33:16.495 --> 00:33:19.900
very uniquely preserved house museums,

00:33:19.900 --> 00:33:21.940
from something beyond just the lens

00:33:21.940 --> 00:33:23.140
of the finished product,

00:33:23.140 --> 00:33:25.360
which we tend to get a bit obsessed about.

00:33:25.360 --> 00:33:27.250
These are things that only ended

00:33:27.250 --> 00:33:29.380
with the death of the respective architect.

00:33:29.380 --> 00:33:32.170
They were 40 years long in process for

00:33:32.170 --> 00:33:35.230
both homes in terms of adding, deleting,

00:33:35.230 --> 00:33:39.550
deconstructing and rearranging their collections

00:33:39.550 --> 00:33:43.735
and their architectural armatures for those collections.

00:33:43.735 --> 00:33:47.350
The person of correspondence actually between them and

00:33:47.350 --> 00:33:51.295
of very close correspondence was Maria Hadfield Cosway.

00:33:51.295 --> 00:33:54.370
Cosway was not a trained architect.

00:33:54.370 --> 00:33:55.660
She did not possess

00:33:55.660 --> 00:33:58.150
a prolific built or theoretical legacy,

00:33:58.150 --> 00:34:00.970
but she was an artist and the patron and

00:34:00.970 --> 00:34:03.910
an educator with very tangible links to Jefferson,

00:34:03.910 --> 00:34:06.415
Soane, and many others in this particular era.

00:34:06.415 --> 00:34:08.830
She had a 40-year long correspondence with

00:34:08.830 --> 00:34:11.800
both of them and over this period,

00:34:11.800 --> 00:34:14.020
they exchanged not just letters,

00:34:14.020 --> 00:34:16.330
but also material objects such as drawings,

00:34:16.330 --> 00:34:20.425
books, artifacts, personal contacts.

00:34:20.425 --> 00:34:21.850
Through this, they cultivated

00:34:21.850 --> 00:34:23.815
a distinct set of shared aesthetic,

00:34:23.815 --> 00:34:26.275
political, and social concerns.

00:34:26.275 --> 00:34:28.930
Through this correspondence, it also facilitated

00:34:28.930 --> 00:34:30.160
an international network that

00:34:30.160 --> 00:34:32.350
sidestepped aristocratic ones,

00:34:32.350 --> 00:34:34.360
gave agency to women and advanced

00:34:34.360 --> 00:34:36.505
professional and stylistic developments

00:34:36.505 --> 00:34:38.915
of architecture on both sides of the Atlantic.

00:34:38.915 --> 00:34:41.190
What's pretty fascinating with the connection is

00:34:41.190 --> 00:34:43.490
that many of these letters between them

00:34:43.490 --> 00:34:46.930
still survive but there really hasn't

00:34:46.930 --> 00:34:49.930
been much effort made to publicize these

00:34:49.930 --> 00:34:53.680
or to dig deeper into anything more than what

00:34:53.680 --> 00:34:55.240
people may or may not know about

00:34:55.240 --> 00:34:58.855
Cosway being a supposed paramour of Jefferson.

00:34:58.855 --> 00:35:03.055
But when they're studied in conjunction,

00:35:03.055 --> 00:35:05.890
Cosway certainly made a significant contribution to

00:35:05.890 --> 00:35:08.575
the aesthetic and architectural thinking

00:35:08.575 --> 00:35:09.820
of both Jefferson and

00:35:09.820 --> 00:35:11.665
Soane that I think should be acknowledged.

00:35:11.665 --> 00:35:14.690
There's a few ways that we can study that.

00:35:15.210 --> 00:35:18.955
Cosway becomes this main connective figure

00:35:18.955 --> 00:35:22.315
and the way of tracing the connections between,

00:35:22.315 --> 00:35:24.640
in many ways, different sides of the Atlantic,

00:35:24.640 --> 00:35:26.380
but then also Jefferson and Soane and

00:35:26.380 --> 00:35:28.270
their respective legacies comes

00:35:28.270 --> 00:35:29.710
down through looking at

00:35:29.710 --> 00:35:32.200
their interpersonal networks, so people,

00:35:32.200 --> 00:35:33.700
but the physical objects

00:35:33.700 --> 00:35:35.170
that were going back and forth across

00:35:35.170 --> 00:35:38.200
the ocean and within the continent,

00:35:38.200 --> 00:35:40.330
the buildings that are left behind and then

00:35:40.330 --> 00:35:42.610
the conceptual legacies that are left as well,

00:35:42.610 --> 00:35:46.880
primarily related to educational institutions.

00:35:47.790 --> 00:35:50.740
Looking at this, Maria,

00:35:50.740 --> 00:35:52.630
who is Hadfield Cosway,

00:35:52.630 --> 00:35:55.735
so original, her birth name is Hadfield,

00:35:55.735 --> 00:35:58.525
was born to an Italian mother and an English father.

00:35:58.525 --> 00:36:01.585
She was one of five children who survived adulthood.

00:36:01.585 --> 00:36:05.500
Her family ran a series very popular inns in Florence.

00:36:05.500 --> 00:36:07.000
She grew up in

00:36:07.000 --> 00:36:09.010
a very dynamic atmosphere where she was

00:36:09.010 --> 00:36:12.040
continually exposed to travelers on the grand tour.

00:36:12.040 --> 00:36:14.140
By the age of 13, she was making

00:36:14.140 --> 00:36:16.165
copies in Florentine galleries.

00:36:16.165 --> 00:36:18.100
At 15, she wrote to

00:36:18.100 --> 00:36:19.810
a friend to say

00:36:19.810 --> 00:36:21.595
that she had this pretty amazing schedule.

00:36:21.595 --> 00:36:23.200
She said, "I go every

00:36:23.200 --> 00:36:25.540
morning to copy pictures until 1:00.

00:36:25.540 --> 00:36:27.550
After lunch, I study, as usual,

00:36:27.550 --> 00:36:30.175
architecture until half-past four."

00:36:30.175 --> 00:36:31.570
It's probably more than

00:36:31.570 --> 00:36:33.040
our studio students, unfortunately.

00:36:33.040 --> 00:36:37.210
[LAUGHTER] "My singing teacher comes at 5:00, at 6:00,

00:36:37.210 --> 00:36:39.595
I go back to drawing until 9:00,

00:36:39.595 --> 00:36:41.080
and in the evenings of the Opera,

00:36:41.080 --> 00:36:43.945
I go to listen to you the latest Prima Donna."

00:36:43.945 --> 00:36:46.540
By 18, she was a selected member of

00:36:46.540 --> 00:36:48.790
the Florentine Disegno Academy,

00:36:48.790 --> 00:36:52.705
so pretty high elevation for such a young woman.

00:36:52.705 --> 00:36:54.790
Contemporaries predicted that she would become

00:36:54.790 --> 00:36:57.700
the next Angelica Kaufman and even surpass

00:36:57.700 --> 00:37:00.310
the success of this continental artist who was one of

00:37:00.310 --> 00:37:04.250
the only two founding members of the Royal Academy.

00:37:04.350 --> 00:37:06.910
The idea of mapping the network came

00:37:06.910 --> 00:37:08.470
down to studying a number of

00:37:08.470 --> 00:37:11.875
letters from a larger sampling.

00:37:11.875 --> 00:37:14.170
It came down to about 2,000 letters that

00:37:14.170 --> 00:37:16.360
were being examined to try to trace

00:37:16.360 --> 00:37:18.580
the relationships and the conversations that are

00:37:18.580 --> 00:37:21.580
happening but also examining

00:37:21.580 --> 00:37:22.780
things like sketchbooks and

00:37:22.780 --> 00:37:24.400
the libraries of the key figures

00:37:24.400 --> 00:37:28.075
such as the triumvirate of Cosway, Jefferson, and Soane.

00:37:28.075 --> 00:37:31.060
This illustration represents some of

00:37:31.060 --> 00:37:34.765
this epistolary sampling and

00:37:34.765 --> 00:37:37.480
from that shows us that number 1,

00:37:37.480 --> 00:37:39.714
Washington was a hub of activity,

00:37:39.714 --> 00:37:42.415
even though it was very much a developing city.

00:37:42.415 --> 00:37:44.350
But that's where we had a lot

00:37:44.350 --> 00:37:46.210
of conversations going on about architecture,

00:37:46.210 --> 00:37:49.390
given the new Federal Capital, and London, of course,

00:37:49.390 --> 00:37:51.610
being a hub of connections because of all of

00:37:51.610 --> 00:37:54.340
the royal sponsorship in

00:37:54.340 --> 00:37:57.550
the schools that were occurring at that period in time.

00:37:57.550 --> 00:38:00.489
Through the Transatlantic Network,

00:38:00.489 --> 00:38:02.770
I started to come up with this idea

00:38:02.770 --> 00:38:05.080
of more figures connected,

00:38:05.080 --> 00:38:07.780
so Jefferson, Soane, and Cosway as this core

00:38:07.780 --> 00:38:11.080
expanding out to about 200 other figures.

00:38:11.080 --> 00:38:13.135
Just to keep it straight in my own head,

00:38:13.135 --> 00:38:15.040
I grabbed a lot of tracing paper and

00:38:15.040 --> 00:38:17.170
ended up making this diagram on my wall.

00:38:17.170 --> 00:38:19.420
It was about 10 feet by six feet.

00:38:19.420 --> 00:38:21.160
It was just a way of me trying to

00:38:21.160 --> 00:38:23.515
see and think through what was going on.

00:38:23.515 --> 00:38:26.395
Trying to translate that into something a little less

00:38:26.395 --> 00:38:32.180
Clockwork Orange was pulling it into a vector map;

00:38:32.250 --> 00:38:36.460
an active network diagram that would start to identify

00:38:36.460 --> 00:38:37.840
certain figures and how they were

00:38:37.840 --> 00:38:39.880
connected through things like

00:38:39.880 --> 00:38:41.170
the Royal Academy of the Arts,

00:38:41.170 --> 00:38:42.520
the Royal Society,

00:38:42.520 --> 00:38:45.895
personal relationships, familial relationships.

00:38:45.895 --> 00:38:48.985
Did someone read what someone else was writing?

00:38:48.985 --> 00:38:50.530
All of these different ways

00:38:50.530 --> 00:38:53.140
of connecting different figures.

00:38:53.140 --> 00:38:55.330
There was a generative nodes of

00:38:55.330 --> 00:38:56.815
Jefferson and Soane and Cosway,

00:38:56.815 --> 00:38:58.720
but it ended up bringing

00:38:58.720 --> 00:39:00.730
into the network other architects,

00:39:00.730 --> 00:39:03.880
artists, doctors, lawyers, statesmen, scientists,

00:39:03.880 --> 00:39:06.340
farmers, and writers through

00:39:06.340 --> 00:39:09.125
these various strands of association.

00:39:09.125 --> 00:39:12.735
Many of them crossing the Atlantic in different ways,

00:39:12.735 --> 00:39:14.010
which is starting to represent

00:39:14.010 --> 00:39:15.960
these vertical striations of who

00:39:15.960 --> 00:39:17.475
was on which side of the Atlantic

00:39:17.475 --> 00:39:20.200
and did they ever go back and forth?

00:39:20.550 --> 00:39:22.945
This also led to concepts

00:39:22.945 --> 00:39:25.119
that I would call geographic timelines,

00:39:25.119 --> 00:39:29.855
so trying to trace who was where and when and why.

00:39:29.855 --> 00:39:33.810
These geographic timelines were ways to

00:39:33.810 --> 00:39:37.605
also start to look at the first connections between,

00:39:37.605 --> 00:39:39.975
for example, Cosway and Soane,

00:39:39.975 --> 00:39:42.750
which happens when Soane was on

00:39:42.750 --> 00:39:45.330
his grand tour sponsored by the Royal Academy.

00:39:45.330 --> 00:39:46.770
He was the son of a bricklayer,

00:39:46.770 --> 00:39:49.460
so he was not coming from a substantial background.

00:39:49.460 --> 00:39:51.220
It was only his award through

00:39:51.220 --> 00:39:54.070
the Royal Academy that provided that opportunity

00:39:54.070 --> 00:39:56.500
to take that necessary tour

00:39:56.500 --> 00:39:59.365
for learning and seeing and sketching.

00:39:59.365 --> 00:40:03.940
They met in 1778 when Soane was in Rome.

00:40:03.940 --> 00:40:06.910
This is before Soane actually added the E to the end of

00:40:06.910 --> 00:40:08.560
his name because he thought that

00:40:08.560 --> 00:40:12.170
added a bit more gravitas for some reason.

00:40:12.390 --> 00:40:17.005
The two actually explored Rome, the Appian Way,

00:40:17.005 --> 00:40:20.050
the newly excavated ruins of Pompeii,

00:40:20.050 --> 00:40:22.480
where you're actually forbidden to sketch.

00:40:22.480 --> 00:40:25.525
But then nearly 10 years later,

00:40:25.525 --> 00:40:28.795
we have the first meeting of Jefferson,

00:40:28.795 --> 00:40:31.525
and now it would be Maria Hadfield Cosway.

00:40:31.525 --> 00:40:34.210
She had married painter Richard Cosway,

00:40:34.210 --> 00:40:36.250
and the pair had met in

00:40:36.250 --> 00:40:39.055
Paris beneath the glass dome of the Halle aux Bleds.

00:40:39.055 --> 00:40:41.844
They explored Versailles and Saint-Cloud,

00:40:41.844 --> 00:40:43.270
and then went to the famous

00:40:43.270 --> 00:40:45.175
ruined house of Desert de Retz,

00:40:45.175 --> 00:40:46.615
which you can see here,

00:40:46.615 --> 00:40:49.660
which is interestingly about 10 minutes

00:40:49.660 --> 00:40:51.415
away from Villa Savoye,

00:40:51.415 --> 00:40:54.760
so it's a funny pairing of houses.

00:40:54.760 --> 00:40:58.015
These connections bloomed and

00:40:58.015 --> 00:41:01.795
allowed to explore this fruitful network.

00:41:01.795 --> 00:41:05.740
For Cosway, this connection was actually really

00:41:05.740 --> 00:41:10.105
beneficial for others within her particular sphere.

00:41:10.105 --> 00:41:13.510
For example, through John Trumbull,

00:41:13.510 --> 00:41:15.460
so the American painter who happened to be

00:41:15.460 --> 00:41:18.550
living with Jefferson at the time he was in Paris,

00:41:18.550 --> 00:41:20.380
she was able to start to make

00:41:20.380 --> 00:41:22.630
some initial connections with

00:41:22.630 --> 00:41:24.909
her brother, George Hadfield,

00:41:24.909 --> 00:41:28.000
who was an architect and would actually become

00:41:28.000 --> 00:41:30.294
the first internationally commissioned

00:41:30.294 --> 00:41:32.500
federal architect for the US government.

00:41:32.500 --> 00:41:35.380
He came over on his first and only trip

00:41:35.380 --> 00:41:38.080
across the Atlantic in 1795 to

00:41:38.080 --> 00:41:40.570
serve as the superintendent architect of the Capitol

00:41:40.570 --> 00:41:43.675
under Thornton, who's ever argumentative.

00:41:43.675 --> 00:41:45.355
It was a very problematic job

00:41:45.355 --> 00:41:47.380
that he resigned from a few years later,

00:41:47.380 --> 00:41:49.420
but he would stay in the United States,

00:41:49.420 --> 00:41:51.115
eventually become a US citizen,

00:41:51.115 --> 00:41:53.170
work on more than 30 projects

00:41:53.170 --> 00:41:56.080
in the DC and metropolitan area,

00:41:56.080 --> 00:42:00.160
and most of you know his work from Arlington House.

00:42:00.160 --> 00:42:03.340
George would actually be interesting that he would

00:42:03.340 --> 00:42:06.475
use this network to stay in touch with his sister.

00:42:06.475 --> 00:42:10.120
Through Jefferson, he actually sent his letters to

00:42:10.120 --> 00:42:12.010
Maria and vice versa because

00:42:12.010 --> 00:42:14.530
Jefferson received diplomatic pouches.

00:42:14.530 --> 00:42:17.065
It was a way for them to stay in touch.

00:42:17.065 --> 00:42:21.295
Jefferson was a little critical but also

00:42:21.295 --> 00:42:23.650
quite thoughtful in response to George when

00:42:23.650 --> 00:42:26.185
Maria asked how he was doing in the United States.

00:42:26.185 --> 00:42:29.365
Jefferson's response was that he was much respected.

00:42:29.365 --> 00:42:32.185
Since the death of Latrobe, our first architect,

00:42:32.185 --> 00:42:36.445
I consider him foremost in the correct principles of art,

00:42:36.445 --> 00:42:39.610
so hold him in quite high esteem.

00:42:39.610 --> 00:42:42.430
Now within the other connections

00:42:42.430 --> 00:42:43.780
of how Maria is serving as

00:42:43.780 --> 00:42:45.940
a conduit between the two for

00:42:45.940 --> 00:42:49.150
concepts and visual references,

00:42:49.150 --> 00:42:51.700
we certainly can turn to the house that she

00:42:51.700 --> 00:42:54.355
shared with her husband, Richard Cosway,

00:42:54.355 --> 00:42:57.460
at Schomberg House and Stratford Place,

00:42:57.460 --> 00:43:01.765
both in London, not too far apart from each other.

00:43:01.765 --> 00:43:03.730
They were structures that blurred

00:43:03.730 --> 00:43:05.680
inside and outside in terms of

00:43:05.680 --> 00:43:07.360
the space for collections and

00:43:07.360 --> 00:43:10.345
exhibitions as we can see through this engraving.

00:43:10.345 --> 00:43:12.580
They were dynamic and experimental,

00:43:12.580 --> 00:43:13.915
certainly more so than

00:43:13.915 --> 00:43:15.760
the lost house museums of people like

00:43:15.760 --> 00:43:17.965
Thomas Hope or John Nash.

00:43:17.965 --> 00:43:20.260
But unfortunately, the Cosways houses would

00:43:20.260 --> 00:43:23.080
both be lost to history.

00:43:23.080 --> 00:43:26.200
Cosway was also significant in the fact that

00:43:26.200 --> 00:43:31.315
she introduced a visual image of Napoleon to England.

00:43:31.315 --> 00:43:34.660
So this Francesco Goma portrait of Napoleon,

00:43:34.660 --> 00:43:37.465
which shows the 29-year-old general

00:43:37.465 --> 00:43:40.870
during his Italian campaign just outside of Lodi.

00:43:40.870 --> 00:43:42.880
Remember that name because it comes back.

00:43:42.880 --> 00:43:44.350
This was actually the earliest known

00:43:44.350 --> 00:43:45.985
portrait of the general.

00:43:45.985 --> 00:43:48.670
It was gifted to Soane by Cosway in

00:43:48.670 --> 00:43:51.070
1820 after the dispersal sales

00:43:51.070 --> 00:43:52.540
following her husband's death.

00:43:52.540 --> 00:43:54.745
It now hangs, if you recognize the image,

00:43:54.745 --> 00:43:57.430
within the famous number 13 breakfast room

00:43:57.430 --> 00:43:59.635
of Sir John Soane's Museum.

00:43:59.635 --> 00:44:02.140
She would gift Soane her own work.

00:44:02.140 --> 00:44:04.930
The painting you see on the left-hand side

00:44:04.930 --> 00:44:06.940
was a gift to Soane.

00:44:06.940 --> 00:44:08.710
It actually come back too other time.

00:44:08.710 --> 00:44:11.275
She'd gifted it to other friends, they passed away,

00:44:11.275 --> 00:44:12.850
came back to Cosway in her will,

00:44:12.850 --> 00:44:15.025
so third time was a charm.

00:44:15.025 --> 00:44:17.140
She knew it would stay at Soane's museum

00:44:17.140 --> 00:44:18.730
because at this point in time he was setting

00:44:18.730 --> 00:44:22.500
up the idea of permanence of the house museum.

00:44:22.500 --> 00:44:24.810
She noted when she sent it to Soane that it

00:44:24.810 --> 00:44:27.825
received its value from its token of friendship.

00:44:27.825 --> 00:44:30.030
So not necessarily from the art itself,

00:44:30.030 --> 00:44:32.250
but from the story behind it.

00:44:32.250 --> 00:44:34.080
This would be a lasting friendship

00:44:34.080 --> 00:44:36.465
between Cosway and Soane.

00:44:36.465 --> 00:44:39.225
He would actually serve as the executor of her will

00:44:39.225 --> 00:44:40.920
until he was forced to resign

00:44:40.920 --> 00:44:43.520
the position when his eyesight was failing.

00:44:43.520 --> 00:44:45.880
She would [NOISE] send him one as well some of

00:44:45.880 --> 00:44:47.560
the first Egyptian objects

00:44:47.560 --> 00:44:49.525
that would show up within his collection.

00:44:49.525 --> 00:44:53.020
You're seeing the two in the center between there.

00:44:53.020 --> 00:44:57.595
She wrote in a letter for this 1822 gift that she,

00:44:57.595 --> 00:44:59.890
"took of her vast collection

00:44:59.890 --> 00:45:02.335
the liberty to add a drop of water."

00:45:02.335 --> 00:45:04.240
So basically giving him something very

00:45:04.240 --> 00:45:06.820
small to add to the collection.

00:45:06.820 --> 00:45:08.200
She said that she received

00:45:08.200 --> 00:45:10.930
these two small sculptures from a friend in Paris,

00:45:10.930 --> 00:45:14.005
who just returned from an excavation,

00:45:14.005 --> 00:45:16.120
and like many others was coming

00:45:16.120 --> 00:45:18.595
back to the continent with their pockets full.

00:45:18.595 --> 00:45:20.500
She sent the figures with

00:45:20.500 --> 00:45:23.020
another friend who was traveling to England.

00:45:23.020 --> 00:45:25.960
She said she, "Even left the Egyptian dust on

00:45:25.960 --> 00:45:27.970
them," in hopes that they would be

00:45:27.970 --> 00:45:30.355
able to take up a place at Soane's museum.

00:45:30.355 --> 00:45:32.200
What's, I think, significant about this

00:45:32.200 --> 00:45:34.810
even though they're size-wise

00:45:34.810 --> 00:45:37.450
very small is that this predates the study of

00:45:37.450 --> 00:45:38.740
the first sarcophagus that would

00:45:38.740 --> 00:45:40.660
show up at Soane's museum,

00:45:40.660 --> 00:45:43.045
which was also excavated by Belzoni,

00:45:43.045 --> 00:45:45.475
who we think got these figures.

00:45:45.475 --> 00:45:48.730
Soane purchased that sarcophagus two years later and

00:45:48.730 --> 00:45:51.940
knocked down a huge portion of the house in

00:45:51.940 --> 00:45:53.140
order to bring it in through

00:45:53.140 --> 00:45:55.060
the north wall and put it beneath

00:45:55.060 --> 00:45:57.625
that prized museum dome and as

00:45:57.625 --> 00:46:00.670
one does had a three-day candlelight party to celebrate.

00:46:00.670 --> 00:46:03.340
[LAUGHTER] But this idea of

00:46:03.340 --> 00:46:06.100
moving walls and changing your collections based on

00:46:06.100 --> 00:46:08.260
new objects coming into play was something

00:46:08.260 --> 00:46:11.050
very familiar to Cosway because

00:46:11.050 --> 00:46:13.420
they actually did this at Stratford place and she

00:46:13.420 --> 00:46:15.760
wrote in a letter to Soane about one of

00:46:15.760 --> 00:46:17.860
the walls failing in the house after they had

00:46:17.860 --> 00:46:21.410
moved something that structurally shouldn't have been.

00:46:22.560 --> 00:46:25.630
This 40-year correspondence had

00:46:25.630 --> 00:46:27.220
some wider consequences beyond

00:46:27.220 --> 00:46:29.500
just the museums themselves but in terms of

00:46:29.500 --> 00:46:32.695
the conversations that happened around these places.

00:46:32.695 --> 00:46:35.080
They facilitated these networks.

00:46:35.080 --> 00:46:36.625
As I said, they started to give

00:46:36.625 --> 00:46:38.560
agency to women and started to open

00:46:38.560 --> 00:46:39.970
up conversations outside

00:46:39.970 --> 00:46:42.565
of particular aristocratic networks.

00:46:42.565 --> 00:46:46.330
Direct examples of these come down to publications.

00:46:46.330 --> 00:46:49.120
Cosway was responsible for the dissemination of

00:46:49.120 --> 00:46:52.780
privately published texts for both Jefferson and Soane.

00:46:52.780 --> 00:46:55.780
Jefferson's notes on the state of Virginia,

00:46:55.780 --> 00:46:57.700
which was published in 1785,

00:46:57.700 --> 00:46:59.035
was printed in London.

00:46:59.035 --> 00:47:00.580
But through a friend of Maria,

00:47:00.580 --> 00:47:02.350
he was able to get a French translator

00:47:02.350 --> 00:47:03.910
and publisher that was able to

00:47:03.910 --> 00:47:08.080
open up that text to another country.

00:47:08.080 --> 00:47:13.330
For Soane, he sent her an edition of his descriptions.

00:47:13.330 --> 00:47:14.440
This is a later edition

00:47:14.440 --> 00:47:16.525
but gives you a sense of what it looks like.

00:47:16.525 --> 00:47:18.160
Soane would eventually produce

00:47:18.160 --> 00:47:19.330
three different editions of

00:47:19.330 --> 00:47:21.250
the description of the house and

00:47:21.250 --> 00:47:23.365
museum on the north side of Lincoln's Inn Fields.

00:47:23.365 --> 00:47:24.970
So essentially him setting

00:47:24.970 --> 00:47:27.610
forth a prescriptive idea of how the museum

00:47:27.610 --> 00:47:32.305
was to be interpreted and explored after his passing.

00:47:32.305 --> 00:47:33.880
But the 1830 edition,

00:47:33.880 --> 00:47:35.095
the very first one,

00:47:35.095 --> 00:47:39.220
he sent one of only 150 copies to Cosway,

00:47:39.220 --> 00:47:41.170
who at this point in time was in Italy,

00:47:41.170 --> 00:47:43.465
and she shared it with friends

00:47:43.465 --> 00:47:46.180
and noted that "Your beautiful

00:47:46.180 --> 00:47:48.520
book has been admired all over Milan

00:47:48.520 --> 00:47:49.780
and architects have taken

00:47:49.780 --> 00:47:52.370
translations of great parts of it."

00:47:52.530 --> 00:47:57.160
Within the legacy of Jefferson, Soane, and Cosway,

00:47:57.160 --> 00:47:59.920
they were all very interested in

00:47:59.920 --> 00:48:02.410
creating an educational institution

00:48:02.410 --> 00:48:04.525
that would take their ideas forward.

00:48:04.525 --> 00:48:06.535
Having localized education,

00:48:06.535 --> 00:48:08.800
especially cognizant of the fact that not

00:48:08.800 --> 00:48:10.510
everyone would have the opportunity

00:48:10.510 --> 00:48:12.850
to travel and take advantage of some of

00:48:12.850 --> 00:48:14.830
the opportunities that they had as

00:48:14.830 --> 00:48:18.310
younger students and even travelers

00:48:18.310 --> 00:48:20.140
in the middle of their careers,

00:48:20.140 --> 00:48:21.820
so each sought to create

00:48:21.820 --> 00:48:24.325
this educational institution in situ.

00:48:24.325 --> 00:48:26.710
We all know one right down the road,

00:48:26.710 --> 00:48:28.390
Jefferson's University of Virginia.

00:48:28.390 --> 00:48:31.240
Soane was opening up his house museum to

00:48:31.240 --> 00:48:34.615
students from about 1813 moving forward.

00:48:34.615 --> 00:48:36.850
At this very same time, Cosway,

00:48:36.850 --> 00:48:39.325
who had moved down to Italy in Lodi,

00:48:39.325 --> 00:48:41.095
so if you remember Napoleon,

00:48:41.095 --> 00:48:44.350
it was a Roman town just southeast of Milan,

00:48:44.350 --> 00:48:47.560
she'd spent the last 17 years of her life here.

00:48:47.560 --> 00:48:49.810
She would begin by adapting

00:48:49.810 --> 00:48:52.870
a 15th-century monastery adjacent to

00:48:52.870 --> 00:48:55.015
Lodi's medieval walls into

00:48:55.015 --> 00:48:56.695
an educational institution from

00:48:56.695 --> 00:49:01.840
1811 and expanded its charter in 1833,

00:49:01.840 --> 00:49:03.940
so a few years before she passed away.

00:49:03.940 --> 00:49:07.570
It was founded exclusively for female students.

00:49:07.570 --> 00:49:10.300
Cosway's curriculum specified subjects

00:49:10.300 --> 00:49:11.455
in drawing and music,

00:49:11.455 --> 00:49:13.270
which is pretty common but also had

00:49:13.270 --> 00:49:17.485
an unprecedented series of topics in science and math.

00:49:17.485 --> 00:49:20.020
The institution is still in operation but

00:49:20.020 --> 00:49:22.810
now operates as a co-ed primary school.

00:49:22.810 --> 00:49:27.550
You're seeing an image of the adapted monastery and

00:49:27.550 --> 00:49:29.980
a view of Cosway talking to some of

00:49:29.980 --> 00:49:33.565
those students in the last year of her life.

00:49:33.565 --> 00:49:38.665
The archive is a really rich project for someone else.

00:49:38.665 --> 00:49:40.600
It is a closed archive,

00:49:40.600 --> 00:49:43.975
strangely, and it has very limited access.

00:49:43.975 --> 00:49:45.790
There's only been a handful of scholars who have really

00:49:45.790 --> 00:49:47.635
gotten in to see what's there.

00:49:47.635 --> 00:49:50.290
It's suspected a number of things had been destroyed.

00:49:50.290 --> 00:49:53.260
It's been moved, it's not properly conditioned.

00:49:53.260 --> 00:49:55.900
I think our archivist friend would be a little

00:49:55.900 --> 00:49:58.870
horrified by what's happening in Lodi right now.

00:49:58.870 --> 00:50:03.650
But there's this rich trove to be discovered.

00:50:03.780 --> 00:50:07.600
This concept of adding a drop of water,

00:50:07.600 --> 00:50:10.360
which I hope is what some of my research is starting to

00:50:10.360 --> 00:50:11.770
do in terms of opening up

00:50:11.770 --> 00:50:13.735
the dialogue between these two gentlemen,

00:50:13.735 --> 00:50:15.040
and then some of the figures

00:50:15.040 --> 00:50:17.005
that were significant between them,

00:50:17.005 --> 00:50:20.860
Cosway being that linchpin within the triumvirate.

00:50:20.860 --> 00:50:23.200
It's important to note that this is

00:50:23.200 --> 00:50:24.970
not the first time people have tried to

00:50:24.970 --> 00:50:28.810
establish a network of sorts for this era.

00:50:28.810 --> 00:50:31.810
The bicentennial administration, held at

00:50:31.810 --> 00:50:35.290
the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in 1975,

00:50:35.290 --> 00:50:36.910
focused on Benjamin Franklin as

00:50:36.910 --> 00:50:39.730
a critical conduit between political figures,

00:50:39.730 --> 00:50:42.055
revolutionary officers and writers.

00:50:42.055 --> 00:50:43.630
This was actually conceived as

00:50:43.630 --> 00:50:45.910
an object-based endeavor with

00:50:45.910 --> 00:50:48.010
dynamic graphics and architects

00:50:48.010 --> 00:50:50.920
Charles and Ray Eames were the ones who actually designed

00:50:50.920 --> 00:50:52.930
the exhibit and the catalog which was

00:50:52.930 --> 00:50:55.299
called The World, Franklin and Jefferson.

00:50:55.299 --> 00:50:58.450
They also produced an accompanying 28 minute film.

00:50:58.450 --> 00:50:59.650
You can find all this on

00:50:59.650 --> 00:51:01.645
the digital archive for the Eames.

00:51:01.645 --> 00:51:03.550
The bicentennial project mark

00:51:03.550 --> 00:51:06.295
the final exhibition for the Eames office,

00:51:06.295 --> 00:51:09.655
and opened in Paris before traveling to Warsaw, London,

00:51:09.655 --> 00:51:11.185
New York City, Chicago,

00:51:11.185 --> 00:51:13.345
LA, and Mexico City.

00:51:13.345 --> 00:51:15.580
The catalog labeled Jefferson and

00:51:15.580 --> 00:51:18.430
Franklin as architects of independence,

00:51:18.430 --> 00:51:21.039
but it unfortunately bypass

00:51:21.039 --> 00:51:22.675
connections to other architects and

00:51:22.675 --> 00:51:24.400
sites as well as this concept of

00:51:24.400 --> 00:51:27.820
any transatlantic network of the arts.

00:51:27.820 --> 00:51:30.880
Additionally, of the 29 individuals

00:51:30.880 --> 00:51:32.380
featured within the exhibit,

00:51:32.380 --> 00:51:35.680
all were male, with

00:51:35.680 --> 00:51:39.325
the exception of first lady Abigail Adams.

00:51:39.325 --> 00:51:42.250
In the nearly four decades since the exhibit,

00:51:42.250 --> 00:51:44.110
I think it's pretty safe to say the women of

00:51:44.110 --> 00:51:45.835
the transatlantic design network

00:51:45.835 --> 00:51:47.755
have yet to receive their due.

00:51:47.755 --> 00:51:50.200
I'll leave you with two folks

00:51:50.200 --> 00:51:53.680
that again are rich projects to move forward

00:51:53.680 --> 00:51:56.320
for hopefully other scholars to take

00:51:56.320 --> 00:52:00.340
up this question of their influence and agency.

00:52:00.340 --> 00:52:02.710
Out of the figures, I was looking at

00:52:02.710 --> 00:52:05.020
the one number that were women,

00:52:05.020 --> 00:52:09.190
both from France and England and America.

00:52:09.190 --> 00:52:15.025
One of which saw a transatlantic woman in many regards,

00:52:15.025 --> 00:52:17.785
which many people probably just know from Hamilton,

00:52:17.785 --> 00:52:20.815
is Angelica Schuyler Church.

00:52:20.815 --> 00:52:26.410
Church was the daughter of a revolutionary general.

00:52:26.410 --> 00:52:29.875
She was the half sister

00:52:29.875 --> 00:52:32.725
of a number of other famous founding fathers.

00:52:32.725 --> 00:52:34.840
But also what's important is that she

00:52:34.840 --> 00:52:38.170
was the sister in law of Alexander Hamilton.

00:52:38.170 --> 00:52:40.060
They have a pretty interesting record

00:52:40.060 --> 00:52:42.310
of correspondence that are pretty funny.

00:52:42.310 --> 00:52:44.290
But what's fascinating about her,

00:52:44.290 --> 00:52:46.360
which has never really been explode is that

00:52:46.360 --> 00:52:49.180
she was the architectural agent for her family.

00:52:49.180 --> 00:52:52.930
So people like Gouverneur Morris would actually consult

00:52:52.930 --> 00:52:54.565
her for review of plans

00:52:54.565 --> 00:52:57.130
for the house that he would work on in London.

00:52:57.130 --> 00:53:00.850
She would be someone to receive folks at Down Place.

00:53:00.850 --> 00:53:05.500
So this is just outside of Windsor.

00:53:05.500 --> 00:53:07.945
Unfortunately, a site that is in

00:53:07.945 --> 00:53:11.990
a little bit of preservation turmoil at the moment.

00:53:12.330 --> 00:53:15.130
Down Place was a site where women of

00:53:15.130 --> 00:53:16.720
the transatlantic design network as well

00:53:16.720 --> 00:53:19.435
as figures like Trumbull and Soane,

00:53:19.435 --> 00:53:20.965
would go to visit

00:53:20.965 --> 00:53:24.985
a country house and get away from the city for a bit.

00:53:24.985 --> 00:53:29.260
We know at this particular place that Cosway actually

00:53:29.260 --> 00:53:32.065
designed a little emblem

00:53:32.065 --> 00:53:34.720
that would go in a folly that Church,

00:53:34.720 --> 00:53:36.805
supposedly, was the author.

00:53:36.805 --> 00:53:38.440
It was never built, but

00:53:38.440 --> 00:53:40.150
the two women were collaborating on

00:53:40.150 --> 00:53:42.250
this little intervention for the residents

00:53:42.250 --> 00:53:44.965
of Down Place along the Thames.

00:53:44.965 --> 00:53:47.485
Later when she returned to America,

00:53:47.485 --> 00:53:49.540
Angelica would be the primary one

00:53:49.540 --> 00:53:50.800
who was in consultation with

00:53:50.800 --> 00:53:52.480
Benjamin La Trobe to have

00:53:52.480 --> 00:53:55.750
their residents built up in the Hudson.

00:53:55.750 --> 00:54:00.145
Our secondary figure, closer familiar figure,

00:54:00.145 --> 00:54:02.725
is Ellen Wayles Randolph Coolidge,

00:54:02.725 --> 00:54:04.674
who was Jefferson's granddaughter.

00:54:04.674 --> 00:54:06.310
I would say in many regards,

00:54:06.310 --> 00:54:10.040
was his architectural and scientific surrogate.

00:54:10.050 --> 00:54:14.320
She provides one other really interesting connection

00:54:14.320 --> 00:54:16.015
between Jefferson and Soane.

00:54:16.015 --> 00:54:19.510
Because it was in March 1839 that she actually visited

00:54:19.510 --> 00:54:21.370
Soane's museum and wrote us

00:54:21.370 --> 00:54:24.505
a description of what it was like to see that site.

00:54:24.505 --> 00:54:26.664
She saw Cosway's paintings,

00:54:26.664 --> 00:54:29.395
her gifts to Soane as well,

00:54:29.395 --> 00:54:31.390
and wrote a pretty interesting description

00:54:31.390 --> 00:54:32.935
that can be found in her diary,

00:54:32.935 --> 00:54:34.660
which was recently transcribed by

00:54:34.660 --> 00:54:36.130
two scholars at

00:54:36.130 --> 00:54:38.200
the International Center for Jefferson Studies.

00:54:38.200 --> 00:54:41.500
You can find Ellen's Victorian diary,

00:54:41.500 --> 00:54:43.120
it was pretty a hefty tone,

00:54:43.120 --> 00:54:45.040
but she gives us amazing lens on

00:54:45.040 --> 00:54:47.545
traveling at that particular period.

00:54:47.545 --> 00:54:49.180
So with these examples,

00:54:49.180 --> 00:54:51.340
I hope it opened up a conversation about some

00:54:51.340 --> 00:54:53.680
of the women who start to

00:54:53.680 --> 00:54:57.040
draw some of the light away perhaps from

00:54:57.040 --> 00:54:59.620
the autonomous inventor and shed

00:54:59.620 --> 00:55:01.420
some interesting perspective on

00:55:01.420 --> 00:55:03.625
the conversations that are happening at the time.

00:55:03.625 --> 00:55:06.820
Thank you. [APPLAUSE] [BACKGROUND]

00:55:06.820 --> 00:55:17.240
Our next speaker shall be Shelby Doyle [inaudible] , architecture

00:55:29.340 --> 00:55:32.500
of Iowa State's College of Design.

00:55:32.500 --> 00:55:34.570
She is also the co-founder of

00:55:34.570 --> 00:55:35.920
the Iowa State University

00:55:35.920 --> 00:55:38.680
Computation and Construction Lab

00:55:38.680 --> 00:55:40.480
which works to connect developments in

00:55:40.480 --> 00:55:43.120
computation to challenges of construction.

00:55:43.120 --> 00:55:46.490
The lab does some teaching, research.

00:55:46.980 --> 00:55:49.120
Shelby Doyle has received

00:55:49.120 --> 00:55:51.145
a Fulbright fellowship to Cambodia,

00:55:51.145 --> 00:55:53.125
has a Master of Architecture from

00:55:53.125 --> 00:55:54.760
Harvard GSE and a

00:55:54.760 --> 00:55:55.690
Bachelor of Science in

00:55:55.690 --> 00:55:57.760
Architecture from University of Virginia.

00:55:57.760 --> 00:56:00.625
[inaudible] Welcome

00:56:00.625 --> 00:56:04.150
Thank you. Well, thank you for having me and

00:56:04.150 --> 00:56:07.105
for all of the wonderful presentations we've seen today.

00:56:07.105 --> 00:56:10.510
The title of my talk is Computational Feminism:

00:56:10.510 --> 00:56:12.430
Attributing future histories of

00:56:12.430 --> 00:56:15.080
the digital in architecture.

00:56:17.550 --> 00:56:21.145
Sorry, I'm trying to do this between two.

00:56:21.145 --> 00:56:24.220
If we accept Maria Carpus dating

00:56:24.220 --> 00:56:26.530
of the digital turn in architecture as

00:56:26.530 --> 00:56:29.680
1992 then there are barely 25 years of

00:56:29.680 --> 00:56:33.625
digital and computational pedagogy upon which to reflect.

00:56:33.625 --> 00:56:35.410
It's well documented that women

00:56:35.410 --> 00:56:37.315
are under-represented in architecture,

00:56:37.315 --> 00:56:39.070
not only in professional practice,

00:56:39.070 --> 00:56:40.960
but also in its archives and history.

00:56:40.960 --> 00:56:42.685
Part of the reason we're here today.

00:56:42.685 --> 00:56:45.100
My question is, is the exclusion

00:56:45.100 --> 00:56:47.245
being replicated and extended

00:56:47.245 --> 00:56:49.360
into future archives of

00:56:49.360 --> 00:56:51.895
digital and computational architecture?

00:56:51.895 --> 00:56:54.910
As this being a [inaudible] rights,

00:56:54.910 --> 00:56:57.280
history is not as simple meritocracy,

00:56:57.280 --> 00:56:59.365
it is a narrative of the past,

00:56:59.365 --> 00:57:02.035
written and revised or not written at all,

00:57:02.035 --> 00:57:03.865
by people with agendas.

00:57:03.865 --> 00:57:05.800
My questions have come out of

00:57:05.800 --> 00:57:08.020
the last years of work or about how we,

00:57:08.020 --> 00:57:10.840
as architects and designers collectively create

00:57:10.840 --> 00:57:12.580
the archive that will now

00:57:12.580 --> 00:57:15.085
become the histories of the future.

00:57:15.085 --> 00:57:17.740
That's where the title of this talk came from.

00:57:17.740 --> 00:57:21.370
I come to you with many more questions than I do answers.

00:57:21.370 --> 00:57:23.320
I am not a historian.

00:57:23.320 --> 00:57:26.650
I do not typically conduct archival research,

00:57:26.650 --> 00:57:28.750
but some of the work I've been doing during

00:57:28.750 --> 00:57:31.210
the past three years has led me to the archive

00:57:31.210 --> 00:57:34.480
and to question of how archives are changed by

00:57:34.480 --> 00:57:39.145
the availability of digital and computational records.

00:57:39.145 --> 00:57:40.720
This is not to say that

00:57:40.720 --> 00:57:43.930
the digital lept into existence in 1992.

00:57:43.930 --> 00:57:45.880
We can have long conversations about

00:57:45.880 --> 00:57:47.980
tracing computations history and

00:57:47.980 --> 00:57:49.000
beginnings to

00:57:49.000 --> 00:57:52.585
perhaps 16th century logic systems or Ada Lovelace's,

00:57:52.585 --> 00:57:56.485
early algorithms, or the mark one during World War II.

00:57:56.485 --> 00:57:58.540
But for this case I'm focusing on

00:57:58.540 --> 00:58:02.290
the present because it's something we have agency over.

00:58:02.290 --> 00:58:05.410
These questions emerged from a selection

00:58:05.410 --> 00:58:07.900
of work from my first three years of teaching,

00:58:07.900 --> 00:58:09.070
research and outreach at

00:58:09.070 --> 00:58:11.470
the ISU Computation and Construction Lab,

00:58:11.470 --> 00:58:13.765
which I co-founded in 2016.

00:58:13.765 --> 00:58:15.520
I won't present this work today,

00:58:15.520 --> 00:58:18.340
but I will introduce it as a framework that led to

00:58:18.340 --> 00:58:19.390
the questioning of

00:58:19.390 --> 00:58:23.000
computational archives and their attribution.