Monday, June 30, 2008

Tuesday Twofer: For He's a Serial Fellow, plus Nance grows Gill

Word comes that former WBEZ cultural custodian and author of the New Modernist blog Edward Lifson, fresh off of a prestigious Loeb Fellowship at Harvard, has just been awarded an Annenberg Fellowship at USC, where he'll be studying architecture journalism.

(When Gandhi was asked about what he thought of architecture journalism, he answered that he thought it would be a good idea - oh, wait, I think the question was actually about Western civilization; but you get the idea.)

We wish Edward well and hope he will continue trips back to Chicago -which he still considers home - if for no other reason than to keep us informed on the progress of the restoration of Mies van der Rohe's 860-880 apartments.

Elsewhere, Trib architecture Blair Kamin reports Sun-Times architecture critic Kevin Nance is leaving the paper to join the firm of Adrian Smith+Gordon Gill Architecture, which is growing at a feverish pace, as "director of publications." Nance started out writing heavily on architecture, but over time began focusing the bulk of his attention on covering the art world. We wish Kevin well and wonder, as does Blair, whether the financially troubled Sun-Times will replace him.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That is interesting about Kevin Nance. His path is reminiscent of that of Lee Bey. Lee Bey was the architecture writer for the Sun-Times in the late 90's through the early 2000's. He then left the Sun-Times to go to work for Skidmore Owings & Merrill.

The interesting part is that Adrian Smith was with SOM at the time that Lee Bey was hired.

Now Smith is in his own firm, and he again has a former Sun-Times writer with him.

Just an observation.