The Harvard Graduate School of Design will no longer refer to one of its houses as the Philip Johnson Thesis House in response to an open letter criticizing its namesakeâs white supremacist views, Dean Sarah M. Whiting wrote in a letter last month.
Though the house did not have an official name, it was often called the Philip Johnson Thesis House or Thesis House because it was the thesis project of architect Philip C. Johnson â27 when he attended the GSD in the 1940s. The building, which is owned by the GSD, will now be formally referred to by its physical address: 9 Ash St.
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A group of architects, designers, artists and academics has urged New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) to remove architect Philip Johnson’s name from their galleries and titles on account of his ‘fascist’ past.
Philip Johnson, one of the most celebrated architects of the 20th century, was responsible for the design of museums, theatres, libraries, houses, gardens and corporate buildings, many of which were architectural masterpieces. He was also the recipient of the first Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1979.
Johnson’s association with the MoMA spanned more than six decades; he was the founding director of the museum’s Architecture and Design department. He died in 2005.
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The Harvard Graduate School of Design (Harvard GSD) will no longer refer to a private residence at 9 Ash Street in Cambridge as the “Philip Johnson Thesis House.” Moving forward, the home, designed by and inhabited by Johnson while enrolled at the Harvard GSD in the 1940s, will now be known solely by its physical street address.
The move, announced by Harvard GSD dean Sarah M. Whiting in a December 5 letter, comes days after the Johnston Study Group, a largely anonymous collective dedicated to examining Johnson’s known racism and collaborative efforts with the Nazi Party, issued a public letter to both Harvard and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), two institutions with deep ties to Johnson. The November 27 letter, which was initially signed by over 30 architects, designs, artists, and educators, called upon both MoMA and Harvard to strike Johnson’s name from all titles and spaces due to the architect’s “widely documented white supremacist views and activities.”
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