Thursday, April 5, 6pm
Lecture Hall 213, Pratt Manhattan
144 West 14th Street, 2nd Floor
Free and open to the public
Pratt Manhattan Gallery will present a panel discussion titled “Glass, Light, and Public Space,” in conjunction with the current Pratt Manhattan Gallery exhibition “Bright Future: New Designs in Glass,” on Thursday, April 5 at 6 PM in Lecture Hall 213 on Pratt’s Manhattan campus at 144 West 14th Street, second floor.
The panel, featuring “Bright Future” guest-curator Sarah Archer, chief curator at the Philadelphia Art Alliance; designer James Carpenter; fine artist Bruce Munro; and glass artist and Pratt alumnus Tom Patti, will discuss the continued vitality and versatility of glass as a medium in technology, design, and architecture. William Menking, professor of architecture at Pratt Institute and founder of The Architect’s Newspaper, will moderate the panel. The discussion and exhibition are free and open to the public.
“Bright Future,” on view at Pratt Manhattan Gallery now through May 5, 2012, features furniture, tableware, architectural elements, and lighting designs by American and international artists and firms exploring issues of sustainability, the manipulation of light, and the contrast of ancient and modern influences in contemporary glass.
About the panelists:
Before becoming chief curator at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, Sarah Archer was director of Greenwich House Pottery and curatorial assistant at the Museum of Arts and Design. Her writing has appeared in the Journal of Modern Craft, American Craft, Artnet, Ceramics: Art and Perception, Hand/Eye, Modern Magazine, and The Huffington Post. She holds a bachelor of arts degree from Swarthmore College and a master of arts degree from the Bard Graduate Center.
James Carpenter is a pioneer in discovering and designing architectural applications for glass. He has worked on the development of new glass materials including photo-responsive glasses and various glass ceramics as well as research projects aimed at potential architectural applications that utilize the unique technical capabilities of these glasses to control and manipulate light and information. He is founder of James Carpenter Design Associates, a firm that specializes in finding and implementing architectural uses of glass, steel, wood, and composites. One of the firm’s more recent projects includes the redevelopment of the McKim, Mead & White’s Farley Post Office as the new Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan (to be renamed Moynihan station).
Bruce Munro is a fine artist renowned for his adventurous sculptural light works and installation art. He has produced work commercially for clients such as The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, ZSL London Zoo, The Royal Society, Liberty & Co, and Great Ormond Street Hospital. His work was included in the Guggenheim Museum’s “Contemplating the Void” exhibition and in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Pirelli Garden as part of its “Brilliant” exhibition.
Pratt industrial design alumnus Tom Patti (B.I.D. ’67 and M.I.D. ’69) is one of the most highly regarded artists working with glass today. Patti has received numerous awards for his sculptural objects and collaborations with architects on projects using high performance glass and plastics. He has been a technical consultant on glass design for Corning Incorporated, Owens Corning, PPG, Solutia, and IBA. Patti has published and exhibited throughout the world and his work is in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, both in New York; The National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C.; the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; and the Louvre Museum in Paris.
About the moderator:
William Menking is an architectural historian, writer, critic, curator of architecture and urbanism, and founder and editor of The Architect’s Newspaper and A|N Book Review. Currently professor of architecture, urbanism, and city planning at Pratt Institute, Menking has lectured and taught at schools in both the United States and Europe. He has also been published in numerous architectural publications, anthologies, and museum catalogs and has curated international exhibitions on the visionary British architecture firm Archigram and the Italian radical architects Superstudio.