History of the Institute

by Harry Bober
This article was originally published in the Spring 1962 issue of Arts and Sciences.

"You may spend your money on a museum," said Walter Cook apropos of the most ambitious enterprise of a well-known Fine Arts Department, "but we are going to move right next to a museum and let them buy our works of art, while we spend it on the professors and get the best there are."

by Jean-Louis Cohen, Daniella Berman, and Jonathan Ritter

Featuring new archival research and previously unpublished photographs and architectural plans, this volume fundamentally revises our understanding of the development of modern New York, focusing on elite domestic architecture within the contexts of social history, urban planning, architecture, interior design, and adaptive re-use. Contributions from emerging and established scholars, art historians, and practitioners ofer a multi-faceted analysis of major gures such as Horace Trumbauer, Julian Francis Abele, Robert Venturi, and Richard Kelly. Taking the James B. Duke House, now home to the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU, as its point of departure, this collection provides fresh perspectives on domestic spaces, urban forms, and social reforms that shaped early-twentieth century New York into the modern city we know today.

On February 1-2, 2013 the Institute marked the close of the centennial celebrations with the conference Duke House: A Case Study in Architecture, Decoration, and Art History. The conference considered the IFA’s presence at the Duke House by looking at the building – from its commissioning by the Dukes to its eventual transformation into an educational and research facility, as well as the work and influence of some of the professors who have been its inhabitants – Donald Hansen, Richard Krautheimer, Erwin Panofsky, and Kirk Varnedoe.