CBH Talk | Glenn Adamson Discusses “A Century of Tomorrows: How Imagining the Future Shapes the Present”
What’s next? For millennia, predicting the future was the province of priests, prophets, astrologers, and seers. Then in the twentieth century futurologists emerged claiming that data and design could make planning a rational certainty. Cultural historian Glenn Adamson writes about futurecasting in his new book, A Century of Tomorrows: How Imagining the Future Shapes the Present. Highlighting thinkers like Buckminster Fuller, Octavia Butler, Timothy Leary and others, Adamson brings order to the seeming chaos of competing tomorrows and shows how visionaries from all walks of life have shaped our thinking of what lies ahead. Join us as we begin the new year by musing on the future. Design critic and writer Alexandra Lange leads Adamson in conversation.
Participants
Glenn Adamson is a curator and cultural historian. His books include Craft: An American History, Fewer, Better Things: The Hidden Wisdom of Objects, and The Invention of Craft. His work has been published in Art in America, Antiques, frieze, and elsewhere. He was previously director of the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, and has held appointments at the Yale Center for British Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He divides his time between London and the Hudson Valley.
Alexandra Lange is an architecture critic and the author of several books, including Meet Me by the Fountain and The Design of Childhood. Her writing has also appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, the New York Times, and T Magazine, and she has been a featured writer at Design Observer, an opinion columnist at Dezeen, and the architecture critic for Curbed. She holds a PhD in twentieth-century architecture history from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and has taught design criticism there and at the School of Visual Arts. She lives in Brooklyn.
What’s next? For millennia, predicting the future was the province of priests, prophets, astrologers, and seers. Then in the twentieth century futurologists emerged claiming that data and design could make planning a rational certainty. Cultural historian Glenn Adamson writes about futurecasting in his new book, A Century of Tomorrows: How Imagining the Future Shapes the Present. Highlighting thinkers like Buckminster Fuller, Octavia Butler, Timothy Leary and others, Adamson brings order to the seeming chaos of competing tomorrows and shows how visionaries from all walks of life have shaped our thinking of what lies ahead. Join us as we begin the new year by musing on the future. Design critic and writer Alexandra Lange leads Adamson in conversation.
Participants
Glenn Adamson is a curator and cultural historian. His books include Craft: An American History, Fewer, Better Things: The Hidden Wisdom of Objects, and The Invention of Craft. His work has been published in Art in America, Antiques, frieze, and elsewhere. He was previously director of the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, and has held appointments at the Yale Center for British Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He divides his time between London and the Hudson Valley.
Alexandra Lange is an architecture critic and the author of several books, including Meet Me by the Fountain and The Design of Childhood. Her writing has also appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, the New York Times, and T Magazine, and she has been a featured writer at Design Observer, an opinion columnist at Dezeen, and the architecture critic for Curbed. She holds a PhD in twentieth-century architecture history from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and has taught design criticism there and at the School of Visual Arts. She lives in Brooklyn.
Brooklyn Public Library - Center for Brooklyn History MM/DD/YYYY 60