Upcoming Programs

In her new book Albert Kahn Inc.: Architecture, Labor, and Industry, 1905–1961, Claire Zimmerman charts a history of second-wave industrialization associated with the growth and development of the United States auto industry and its global footprint. Her case study of the architecture firm most closely associated with the major auto companies in Detroit explores how industrial capitalism fueled campuses of the auto industry and helped catalyze the militarization of industry.

The Museum’s director, Carol Willis, will offer a gallery tour of The Modern Concrete Skyscraper, which examines the hidden history of concrete in tall buildings. This exhibition reveals why, today, almost all skyscrapers are built of concrete, not steel. Curator’s tours are FREE, but you must book a timed ticket at 3pm on Ticketstripe, through the RSVP button.

As the US struggles to provide affordable housing, millions of Americans live in deteriorating public housing projects, enduring the mistakes of past housing policy. In his new book The Projects, Howard A. Husock explains how we got here, detailing the tragic rise and fall of public housing and the pitfalls of other subsidy programs. He takes us inside a progressive movement led by a group of New York City philanthropists, politicians, and business magnates who first championed public housing as a solution to urban blight.

Historian of architecture, engineering, and the urban history of Chicago, Thomas Leslie, guest co-curator with Carol Willis for the Museum’s exhibition The Modern Concrete Skyscraper, will summarize the new avenues of research that grew from research on the exhibition. This in-person program traces the history of concrete skyscraper construction in Chicago, highlighting how the material challenged the more established steel industry in the city and how local organizations played pivotal roles in advancing concrete technology to new heights.

Chicago’s tallest skyscraper when it opened in 1921, the Wrigley Building could be called the Midwest’s Woolworth Building. The gleaming white terra-cotta tower at the head of Michigan Avenue marked a move that opened the northward extension of the commercial concentration of the Loop. To celebrate the publication of the handsome new monograph The Wrigley Building: The Making of an Icon, the Museum will convene a two-session program that features a presentation by the book’s authors and a symposium of scholars that places the building in context and contrast to the contemporary towers of New York.

In his new book, Men at Work: The Empire State Building and the Untold Story of the Craftsmen who Built It, Glenn Kurtz re-examines the familiar story of the Empire State’s amazing construction from perspective that has stumped previous researchers: the lives of workers who labored daily on the site. Taking the iconic photographs of Lewis W. Hine, collected in his 1932 book Men at Work as a starting point, Kurtz delved into archives, period newspapers, and corporate communications to retrieve the identities of the craftsmen that history has seen as “anonymous” symbols.