The Pritzker Architecture Prize
Posted by: Rebecca Vnuk
In a field where no Nobel Prize is awarded, the Pritzker Architecture Prize has often been likened to that honor. The prize, according to the official website, is intended “[t]o honor a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision, and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.” It was “established by the Pritzker family of Chicago through their Hyatt Foundation in 1979.”
The first winner was Philip Johnson in 1979, and the 2009 winner is Switzerland’s Peter Zumthor. The heart of the website typically provides for each winner a short biography, jury citation, text of the acceptance and ceremony speeches as well as a video of the speeches, photos of selected works, a link to the architect’s official website, and (except for the early years) an essay by a noted authority.
An article by Scott Cantrell in the September 17 Dallas Morning News announces plans for the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, “designed by Pritzker Prize laureate Thom Mayne and his California architecture firm Morphosis” and due to open in 2013: “The museum building will add another winner of architecture’s most prestigious international prize to the four represented in the nearby Dallas Arts District: I.M. Pei, Renzo Piano, Norman Foster, and Rem Koolhaas.” (Of these buildings, only Piano’s is an art museum–The Nasher Sculpture Center.) While in Dallas, art lovers should not miss the encyclopedic Dallas Museum of Art, The Crow Collection of Asian Art, or–one of the finest collections of Spanish art outside Spain–The Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University.
I rarely pass up an opportunity to tout the great art museums in Texas, and so I will add that Fort Worth, 45 minutes west of Dallas, is home to three great but modestly-sized art museums. The Amon Carter Museum, designed by Philip Johnson, has a wonderful collection of American art and is particularly strong in photography; I have never been there and failed to see a knock-your-socks-off photography show. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is a stunner of a building by Tadao Ando. Across the street is one of the most acclaimed museum buildings not including the word Guggenheim: the Kimbell Museum, designed by Louis Kahn (the only architect mentioned in this blog post who is not a Pritzker laureate). Here is a masterpiece of a building whose only fault in my mind has been that it could never feature enough of its own masterpieces when it was hosting a traveling show as well; an unobtrusive addition in the works by Renzo Piano should remedy that. Finally, you must visit Fort Worth’s Japanese Gardens, an aesthetic marvel and (in my humble opinion and that of my wife) one of the finest gardens anywhere.
