The small town of New Harmony, Indiana, was an important site of Houstonian Jane Blaffer Owen’s architectural, art and cultural philanthropy. New Harmony is renowned as the site of two successive Utopian settlements during the 19th century: the Harmonists and the Owenites. More than 30 structures from the Harmonist and Owenite communities have been preserved alongside other historic buildings that Jane Blaffer Owen moved to the town and striking modern works she commissioned by Richard Meier and Philip Johnson.
A new book, Avant-Garde in the Cornfields: Architecture, Landscape, and Preservation in New Harmony, provides insight into the architecture, landscape and preservation of a singular town in the Midwest and raises provocative questions about how history is interpreted through design and historic preservation. During this free program, a group of distinguished architects, historians and authors will discuss the lasting legacy of New Harmony and Jane Blaffer Owen’s work there.
Avant-Garde in the Cornfields will be available for purchase at the event from Basket Books & Art.
Preservation Houston is pleased to co-sponsor this program with the Blaffer Art Museum, the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design and Houston Mod.
Details, location and parking
This program will begin at 6 p.m. Tuesday, May 2, at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston. The event is free and open to the public; no RSVP is required.
Free parking will be available in UH’s Elgin Street Garage, 4224 Elgin at UH Entrance 18. Bring your garage ticket to the museum’s front desk for validation. The museum is a short walk from the Elgin/Third Ward station on MetroRail’s Purple Line.
About the presenters
Stephen Fox is an architectural historian and a Fellow of the Anchorage Foundation of Texas. He is a lecturer in architecture at the University of Houston and Rice University. Fox is the author of The Architecture of Birdsall P. Briscoe, The Country Houses of John F. Staub and AIA Houston Architectural Guide.
Nancy Mangum McCaslin is a freelance writer and developmental editor for university presses and commercial publishers. She worked with Jane Blaffer Owen, who was writing New Harmony, Indiana Like a River, Not a Lake: A Memoir (University of Indiana Press, 2015), published posthumously. Mangum McCaslin divides her time between Texas and New Harmony, where she is actively involved with the University of Southern Indiana’s Historic New Harmony and the Robert Lee Blaffer Foundation.
Joe Meppelink is Principal at Metalab, a multi-disciplinary design practice specializing in architecture, public art project management and creative infrastructure. He with his business partner, Andrew Vrana, led a series of courses at the University of Houston college of architecture with visiting critic Ben Nicholson to investigate Frederick Kiesler’s Grotto for Meditation in New Harmony. With the support of Jane Blaffer Owen, they authored a contemporary interpretation of the grotto on the UH campus.
Michelangelo Sabatino is an architectural historian, curator and preservationist whose research and writing focuses primarily on modern architecture and the built environment. He is professor of architectural history and preservation at Illinois Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture, where he directs the Ph.D. program and is the inaugural John Vinci Distinguished Research Fellow.
Photo: Roofless Church, New Harmony (1960, Philip Johnson) / Carol M. Highsmith's America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division