Michael J. Lewis is Faison-Pierson-Stoddard Professor of Art at Williams College. He writes widely on art and culture, and his essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Atlantic Monthly, and his books include Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind and American Art and Architecture.  In 2008 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for his study of Utopian societies. The Philadelphia architect Frank Furness designed some of the most imaginative and idiosyncratic buildings of the Victorian era, including the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Fisher Fine Arts Library of the University of Pennsylvania. Since his rediscovery in the 1960s, after generations of ridicule and neglect, he is now regarded as one of Philadelphia’s great cultural figures. This lecture will show how his architecture rested on a rich and complex ethical basis, which was shaped by the transcendentalist philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and which Furness passed on to his pupil Louis Sullivan.

Reception: 5:30 p.m., Program: 6:00 p.m.

RSVP:  sduffy [at] amphilsoc [dot] org or call Reception Desk (215) 440-3400