Paola Antoneli is the Senior Curator of the Department of Architecture & Design as well as the Director of Research and Development at the Museum of Modern Art. She served on the Van Alen Institute Board of Trustees from 1998 to 2007.
“I really enjoyed the fact that Van Alen’s tools were not the usual tools of academic discourse, but to say, ‘Let’s go have a competition’ or ‘Let’s go engage the institutions; let’s go talk to the mayor’s office.’ One of the reasons I signed on was because I saw a possibility to be activists.”
Marvin Anderson is a practicing architect and architectural historian, and a PhD student at the University of Washington at Seattle where he is writing a dissertation on the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects that draws heavily on materials he found in the Van Alen archive.
“The other major component of the Beaux-Arts method was learning through competitions…In the United States, the competition system was seen as apt because of the capitalistic nature of the society. So school was a great preparation for real life, which was a dog-eat-dog world: Do your best, work hard, and then party hard.”
Jamie Hand is Director of Research Strategies at ArtPlace America, and served as Program Director of Van Alen Institute between 2006 and 2010, where she helped develop the large-scale competitions Envisioning Gateway and Changing Course.
“The only competition that was invented out of the clear blue sky was Life at the Speed of Rail (2011)… The idea was that there is energy around all this talk about high-speed rail, but what does it look like? What does infrastructure look like? Everybody’s talking about these things, but design isn’t involved so how can we insert ourselves and be an advocate for design being a part of these more abstract conversations?”
Byron Bell is Founder and Principal of Byron Bell Architects and Planners, as well as a board member emeritus at Van Alen Institute. Bell first became involved with the Institute in 1962 when he competed for the Paris Prize. He has continued to support the organization, serving on competition committees and as vice president, president, treasurer, and board member.
“I was looking through some programs the other night and one of them was an abandoned railroad track in some town that we made up. The question was, what are you going to do with it? Well, now we have our beautiful High Line.”
Bob Fox is Founder and Partner Emeritus at COOKFOX Architects. He served as chairman of the Van Alen Institute Board of Trustees from 1991 to 1995. He over saw much of the transition of the organization from the National Institute of Architectural Education (NIAE) to Van Alen Institute.
“We created a team of incredible thought leaders and hardworking young people and made Van Alen what it is today. It was all about public space.”
M.J. Long is Partner at Long & Kentish and teaches at Yale University. She was the 1962 Thesis Prize winner, and is one of the few women to receive a prize from the National Institute of Architectural Education (NIAE).
“The first thing that completely knocked me sideways was going to Zonnestraal …. that day was something I never forgot, that was really the beginning of that fellowship traveling, getting me involved in European architecture.”
Jim Polshek is Founder of Polshek Partnership (now Ennead Architects). He served on the Board of Trustees at Van Alen Institute during the transition years when he was a strong advocate for a younger, more diverse and dynamic approach to the organization and its work.
“I think that from the day that I decided or believed that I would pursue architecture as a career, as a way of life, that it was inextricably connected to politics.”
Zoë Ryan is the John H. Bryan Chair and Curator of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago. She worked at Van Alen Institute from 2000 to 2006 as Programs Associate and then as Senior Curator.
“We were very small but very feisty institution, and absolutely it wasn’t about our singular voice but it was about how we could bring more diverse voices to the table.”
Adi Shamir is a Commissioner for the New York City Landmark Preservation Commission. She was the Executive Director at Van Alen Institute from 2006 to 2009. During her time as Director she launched the New York Prize and established the institutional archive.
“The archive work, which was real research into what it was that the Institute produced over the century, allowed ways for people to find the memory and track the development of a discipline over the course of time.”
Peter Wolf is a land use expert, author and investment advisor. He was on the Board of Trustees at Van Alen Institute in the late 1990s and early 2000s and served as chairman in 1999. As a board member he advocated for more engagement with the public realm and civic agencies.
“I’m such an advocate of public space and public activity. I get in trouble for it all the time because I get in fights of all kinds. I wish the public was more astute about it and more upset about it.”