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James S Ackerman

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Nationality
  
American


Name
  
James Ackerman

James S. Ackerman wwwcollegeartorgimagesscholarsackermanjpg

Full Name
  
James Sloss Ackerman

Born
  
November 8, 1919 (age 104) (
1919-11-08
)
San Francisco, California, United States

People also search for
  
Francis Molo, Michelangelo Muraro, Paolo Marton, Morgan Freeman

Parents
  
Louise Sloss, Lloyd Stuart Ackerman

Education
  
New York University Institute of Fine Arts (1952), Yale University

Awards
  
Alice Davis Hitchcock Award, Guggenheim Fellowship for Humanities, US & Canada

Known for
  
Art history, History of architecture

Books
  
The Villa, The architecture of Michel, Origins - Imitation - Conventions, Palladio, Distance Points

Now james s ackerman in conversation with mohsen mostafavi and erika naginski


James Sloss Ackerman (November 8, 1919 – December 31, 2016) was an American architectural historian, a major scholar of Michelangelo's architecture, of Palladio and of Italian Renaissance architectural theory.

Contents

James S. Ackerman John Simon Guggenheim Foundation James S Ackerman

In 2017, Ackerman was awarded the Henry Hope Reed Award.

James S. Ackerman James S Ackerman a Profile

Biography

James S. Ackerman Amazoncom James S Ackerman Books Biography Blog Audiobooks

Ackerman was born in San Francisco in November 1919. He studied at the Cate School in Carpinteria, California, graduating in 1937 before attending Yale University. At Yale, 1938–41, he came under the influence of Henri Focillon. His graduate work was at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (MA 1947, PhD 1952), where he studied with Richard Krautheimer and Erwin Panofsky. His studies were interrupted by his World War II service in the US Army in Italy, which, however, gave him an opportunity to increase his on-site understanding of Italian Renaissance architecture, his specialty—he was assigned to retrieve the archives secured at the Certosa di Pavia. He was a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome (1949–52). He taught at Berkeley and from 1960 at Harvard as Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Fine Arts until his retirement in 1990.

James S. Ackerman Proportional Systems in the History of Architecture A Conversation

He was the editor of The Art Bulletin (1956–60) and Annali d'architettura. Ackerman was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963. He was a member of the American Philosophical Society, and a corresponding member of the British Academy, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, the Accademia Olimpica, Vicenza, the Ateneo Veneto, the Accademia di San Luca in Rome and the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala. He gave the Slade Lectures at Cambridge in 1969-70. He received six honorary doctorates and was a Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, an honorary citizen of Padua, and received a Special Golden Lion Award at the Venice Biennale of Architecture of 2008.

James S. Ackerman Proportional Systems in the History of Architecture A Conversation

His rigorous method set architecture in the broader contexts of cultural and intellectual history. He was awarded the Balzan Prize 2001 for achievement in architectural history and urbanism and the Paul Kristeller citation 2001 of the Renaissance Society of America for lifetime achievement. Ackerman conceived and narrated the films shot by John Terry Looking for Renaissance Rome (1975, with Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt) and Palladio the Architect and His Influence in America (1980).

He died in December 2016 at the age of 97.

Selected publications

Aside from numerous articles, Ackerman has written

  • The Cortile del Belvedere (1954) This was based on his PhD dissertation on the Renaissance extension of the Vatican Palace.
  • The Architecture of Michelangelo (2 vols., 1961; paperback version with condensed second volume, 1986) Volume I is a critical overview of the architect's practice and theory,and Vol. II an exhaustive catalogue of Michelangelo's mostly-unfinished buildings, employing architectural drawings and contemporary archival and graphic sources. The work received the Hitchcock Award of the Society of Architectural Historians.
  • Palladio (series "Architect and Society") Pelican Books (1966; 1977, 2008) An introductory chapter "Palladio and his times" is followed by chapters discussing the examples of Palladio's villas, civic and domestic architecture, ecclesiastical architecture, and principles of his design and practice.
  • Palladio's Villas (1967)
  • The Villa: Form and Ideology of Country Houses (1990), an overview of the country house from Roman times to le Corbusier and Wright.
  • James Ackerman Art Historian, 1992, book length interview for the Getty Foundation and U.C.L.A.
  • Distance Points: Studies in Theory and Renaissance Art and Architecture, MIT Press (1991) Seven essays divided between the theory of criticism and the relation of architecture and science in the Renaissance, with individual studies of Leon Battista Alberti and Leonardo.
  • Origins, Imitation, Conventions: Representation in the Visual Arts, MIT Press (2002) Twelve essays. For a full bibliography see his Google website.
  • References

    James S. Ackerman Wikipedia