Kirk Varnedoe Visiting Professor

The Kirk Varnedoe Visiting Professorship brings a distinguished scholar to the Institute each year to teach a course and give a series of public lectures in the area of modern and contemporary art. The Professorship was endowed in 2006 by the late Professor Varnedoe's friends and colleagues to honor and perpetuate his legacy of innovative teaching and remarkable public presence. Past holders of this position include Esther da Costa Meyer (spring 2024), Juan José Lahuerta (2023), Anna Indych-López (2022), Chika Okeke-Agulu (2020), Nina M. Athanassoglou-Kallmyer (2019),Lowery Stokes Sims (2018), Jacqueline Lichtenstein (2016), S. Hollis Clayson (2015), Briony Fer (2014), Thierry de Duve (2013), Okwui Enwezor (2012), Wu Hung (2011), David Joselit (2010), Alexander Potts (2009), Molly Nesbit (2008), and Jeffrey Weiss (2007).

Watch the public lectures of previous Kirk Varnedoe visiting professors.

Spring 2025

Mary McLeod is a professor of architecture at Columbia University, where she teaches architecture history and theory. She has also taught at Yale University, Harvard University, University of Kentucky, University of Miami, and the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies. She received her B.A., M.Arch., and Ph.D. from Princeton University. Her research and publications have focused on the history of the modern movement and on contemporary architecture theory, examining issues concerning the connections between architecture and ideology. She is co-editor of Kenneth Frampton: Conversations; Architecture, Criticism, Ideology; and Architecture Reproduction, and is the editor of and contributor to the book Charlotte Perriand: An Art of Living (Abrams, 2003). She also initiated and helped curate the exhibition Charlotte Perriand: Interior Equipment, held at the Urban Center in New York. Presently she is co-editing a website on pioneering American women architects for the Beverly Willis Architectural Foundation. Her articles have appeared in journals such as Journal of Architecture, Assemblage, Oppositions, Art Journal, AA Files, JSAH, Casabella, Art Journal, Harvard Design Magazine, and Lotus, as well as other books and anthologies, such as Modern Architecture and the Lifeworld: Essays in Honor of Kenneth Frampton, Complexity and Contradiction at Fifty, Food and the City, Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes, Architecture School, The Sex of Architecture, Architecture in Fashion, Architecture of the Everyday, Architecture and Feminism, The Pragmatist Imagination, The State of Architecture, Fragments: Architecture and the Unfinished, Architecture Theory since 1968, Oppositions Reader, Le Parole dell’Architettura, and Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art. She has received several fellowships and awards, including a Docomomo USA Advocacy Award of Excellence, Brunner Award, Fulbright Fellowship, NEH award, and grants from New York Council of the Arts and the Graham Foundation. She was named a Fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians in 2020.