Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • Videos
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Library
    • Research
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • |
  • Alumni
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • |
  • Alumni
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • Videos
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Library
    • Research
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit

Library Awarded $280,000 NEH Grant for Phase Two of Marcel Breuer Digital Project

Thursday, April 11, 2013, By Pamela Whiteley McLaughlin
Share

breuerThe National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded the Syracuse University Library a $280,000 grant for phase two of a project that created a digital scholarly edition of the works of Bauhaus architect Marcel Breuer. The new project, titled “Marcel Breuer, Architect: Life and Work, 1953-1981,” will unite source materials from the latter half of Breuer’s career, during which his services were sought by powerful business, governmental and religious institutions.

These new source materials will be integrated in the Marcel Breuer Digital Archive web portal created in the first phase of the project, which was funded by an NEH grant to Syracuse University Library’s Special Collections Research Center in 2009.

Project activities include:
• the digitization of Syracuse University’s Marcel Breuer Papers and relevant materials from partner institutions, such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art and the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), including drawings, correspondence and moving images and audio (approximately 70,000 new items)
• enhancing the functionality of the existing site, including the addition of a “lightbox” feature to allow users to create an account and save images for further research or for teaching purposes. The “lightbox” will also allow users to compare multiple images side-by-side.
• “Mapping Marcel Breuer,” a digital humanities pilot project. The creation of a geospatial mapping tool will help users visualize Breuer’s professional networks and the locations of his buildings. This tool will draw upon the metadata associated with correspondence, contracts and other documents.

Breuer began donating his papers to Syracuse University Library in 1964. Today, the Syracuse Breuer collection includes thousands of original oversized drawings and blueprints, correspondence and photographs. Upon Breuer’s death in 1981, his widow donated many of his remaining papers to the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art.

Based in the library’s Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) and led by its senior director, Sean Quimby, with project coordinator Teresa Harris, the project is a partnership with the School of Architecture (SOA). SOA students and faculty will assist with usability testing as the web project develops. SOA faculty member Jonathan Massey, along with Barry Bergdoll, Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, serve on the project’s advisory board.

“The completion of the Breuer project is essential if one of the most valuable yet consistently under-tapped resources of  20th century architectural history, and of American art, social and urban history, is to be rendered fully accessible. The digital archive could open not only a new generation of Breuer scholarship, it could open a whole new set of questions about the profile and issues of American modernism from the 1930s through the late 1970s,” Bergdoll said in a letter supporting the proposal.

Breuer was born in Pécs, Hungary, in 1902. At the age of 21, he went to work in the office of Walter Gropius, founder of the modernist Bauhaus School of Design. At the Bauhaus School, Breuer taught furniture design, and in 1925 earned critical acclaim for his “Wassily” chair, which combined the radical simplicity of form with tubular steel and fabric. He and Gropius emigrated to the United States in the late 1930s, where they taught at Harvard University and maintained a joint architectural firm in Cambridge, Mass.

In 1941, Breuer established a singular reputation for his “bi-nuclear” house, which organized physical space around new modes of day-to-day life. The “bi-nuclear” house, along with his demonstration house in the garden of New York’s Museum of Modern Art (1949), helped to inspire America’s fascination with housing in the post-war era.

By the mid-1950s, Breuer had designed some 60 private residences and had begun to undertake large-scale, institutional projects like the UNESCO headquarters in Paris (1953), the Whitney Museum of Art in New York (1966), buildings on the campuses of New York University and St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn., and the Cleveland Museum of Art (1970).

The collections at Syracuse University, the Smithsonian and elsewhere document not only the buildings that were completed, but also projects that never came to fruition. Together, they document the career of a man that Time magazine in 1956 called one of the “form-givers of the 20th century.”

For more information on the project, contact Quimby at 315-443-9759 or smquimby@syr.edu.

  • Author

Pamela Whiteley McLaughlin

  • Recent
  • Alumni Draw on Their Military Experience in Their Roles as Teachers
    Thursday, May 26, 2022, By Martin Walls
  • Bringing ‘CSI’ Into the Classroom
    Thursday, May 26, 2022, By Dan Bernardi
  • Eugene ‘Gene’ Anderson to Depart Syracuse, Tapped to Lead University of Pittsburgh’s Business School
    Thursday, May 26, 2022, By News Staff
  • Newhouse Creative Advertising Students Win 195 Awards in 1 Year, Setting a New School Record
    Thursday, May 26, 2022, By News Staff
  • “Syracuse University to rename the Carrier Dome – what name would fans choose?”
    Wednesday, May 25, 2022, By Lily Datz

More In Uncategorized

“Syracuse University to rename the Carrier Dome – what name would fans choose?”

Beth Egan, associate professor of advertising in the Newhouse School, was quoted in the CNY Central story “Syracuse University to rename the Carrier Dome – what name would fans choose?” Egan, who specializes in strategic communications and advertising, discussed why…

Syracuse Views Spring 2022

We want to know how you experience Syracuse University. Take a photo and share it with us. We select photos from a variety of sources. Submit photos of your University experience using #SyracuseU on social media, fill out a submission…

“Can the Working Class End PMC Environmentalism?”

Matthew Huber, professor of geography and the environment in the Maxwell School, was interviewed for the Diet Soap Media Podcast episode “Can the Working Class End PMC Environmentalism?” Huber, who studies climate politics, discussed his new book that unpacks the failures…

Breen authors piece on Samuel Alito

Jenny Breen, associate professor of law in the College of Law, authored the Common Dreams opinion piece “The ‘Raw Judicial Power’ of Samuel Alito Is an Attack on Dignity, Autonomy, and Progress.” Breen, who teaches Constitutional law, discussed the leak…

“Governors Island’s New Orchard Is a Treasure Trove of Rare Fruits”

An art installation created by Sam Van Aken, associate professor of studio arts in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, was featured in the Thrillist story “Governors Island’s New Orchard Is a Treasure Trove of Rare Fruits.” Van Aken, who…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
Social Media Directory

For the Media

Find an Expert Follow @SyracuseUNews
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • @SyracuseU
  • @SyracuseUNews
  • @SUCampus
  • Social Media Directory
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Campus Status
  • Syracuse.edu
© 2022 Syracuse University News. All Rights Reserved.