Providence, RI – Providence Preservation Society (PPS) announces its first-ever festival of modern design with a week of programs, panels, walks and behind-the-scenes tours, culminating in its signature open house event on Saturday, Oct. 11.
The week begins with the keynote lecture given by the design historian Donald Albrecht, author of nearly 30 books and curator of exhibitions at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, National Building Museum, and Museum of the City of New York on American architecture and design in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Albrecht’s lecture, “Designing Home: Jews and Midcentury Modernism,” addresses the role Jewish designers, architects, and patrons played in shaping modernism in America. It highlights the contributions of well-known figures such as Anni Albers and Richard Neutra and those of lesser-known or critically overlooked artists, including Ruth Adler Schnee and Marguerite Wildenhain. The event location is Temple Beth-El, designed by Percival Goodman in the early 1950s and considered by some to be the best modernist building in the state.
During the week, programs include an insider’s tour of modern furniture dealer Adam Edelsberg’s Pawtucket gallery and a curator’s tour of significant pieces in the RISD Museum’s collection in addition to a walking conversation about skateboarders and Brutalism, starting in Cathedral Square and ending with a skateboarding performance at Adrian Hall Way.
Special events during the week include the Mid Mod Cocktail Party on Thursday, Oct. 9 at a 1959 Castellucci Galli home on the East Side; a day-long symposium on Friday, Oct. 10 titled Providence Modern (1945-1995): Architecture, Design, Planning, Culture which explores the history of urban renewal in addition to architecture and design; and PPS’s signature open house event on Saturday, Oct. 11, which includes access to a dozen homes on the East Side designed by Ira Rakatansky, Friedrich St Florian, Domenic Thomas Russillo, Barker & Turoff, Conrad Green, and Lester Millman. Many of the homes include period built-ins and collections of modern furniture as well as modern and contemporary art by local artists. The open house is an official event of the modern advocacy organization Docomomo’s national Tour Day.
Marisa Angell Brown, executive director of PPS, said, “The second half of the 20th century was an incredibly creative and tumultuous time in America, and this is evident in the era’s architecture and planning history. Across the city, urban renewal projects demolished intact Black and immigrant neighborhoods, displacing and dispersing close to 15,000 people. Meanwhile, architects and patrons on the East Side, many of them Jewish, built the city’s first modernist homes in the 1940s to 1960s, a radical gesture in such a historic city. All of this coincides with PPS’s own founding in 1956. Providence has an unusually rich cultural history – we are looking forward to bringing people together over the course of this week in October to learn more and connect.”
