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Join Jeffrey Lieber for a talk surveying Philip Johnson’s architecture and writings of the 1950s and 1960s. Were Johnson’s aristocratic posturing and polemical approach expressions of camp sensibility? Were his pronouncements about beauty and history expressions of queer desire? Addressing these questions, while also considering his commitment to fascist politics in the 1930s, Lieber highlights Johnson’s oppositional attitude toward mainstream cultural and ideological imperatives of the postwar era.

Jeffrey Lieber is Associate Professor of Art History at Texas State University and the author of Flintstone Modernism or the Crisis in Postwar American Culture (The MIT Press, 2018). His essays and reviews have appeared in Architectural Histories, Texas Architect, and Harvard Design Magazine. Lieber’s 2018 New York Times op-ed (“What Will We Lose When the Union Carbide Building Falls?”) sparked debate over the meaning of mid-20th century architecture in the U.S. His wide-ranging interests in the field have been sponsored by the Delmas Foundation Grant for Independent Research in Venice, and are reflected in his curation of provocative film series at the Harvard Film Archive and The New School. He received his AB from Vassar College and his PhD in art history from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Glass House Presents is an ongoing series of talks, performances, and other live events that extend the site’s historic role as a gathering place for artists, architects, and other creative minds. This event is co-hosted by New Canaan Library and supported in part by Connecticut Humanities and the New Canaan Community Foundation.