Housed in a sprawling Tudor Revival mansion designed in 1916 by John Russell Pope for financier John Kerr Branch, the Virginia Center for Architecture in Richmond stands among the contentious memorials to Virginia-born Confederate heroes and Richmond native Arthur Ashe that dominate Monument Avenue. Set within this insistently masculine topography, the recent exhibition Glass Ceilings: Highlights from the International Archive of Women Architects recast this particularly potent site to challenge historical narratives built on male privilege (Figure 1). Showcasing twenty women drawn from the hundreds represented in the International Archive, the exhibition rewarded visitors with fresh materials and new discoveries. As the title suggests, however, the show advanced two ambitious, if ultimately competing, curatorial aims: to offer a critique of gender inequity within the architectural profession, as the fittingly architectural metaphor of the glass ceiling suggested, and to further...
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June 2011
