Many of you know that I am on the Board of Directors of the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art. The national headquarters is located in New York and the organization supports 15 local chapters across the US. The mission of the ICAA is dedicated to making the built environment more beautiful, sustainable and humane. It accomplishes this through education, publications and advocacy with lectures, salons, classes and travel programs for students, design professionals and the general public.
As co-chair of the newly combined Publications and Communications committee, I wanted to share the accomplishments of this small band of dedicated bibliophiles with you. Over the past 20 years we have shepherded through the publication process countless new books with original research and scholarly reference reprints that foster the study of Classical architecture, gardens, art and public buildings. Some recent titles are:
Fences, Gates & Small Houses, by Carl Schmidt
Gardens for a Beautiful America, by Sam Watters, photos F.B. Johnson
The New York Public Library & Its Decoration, by Henry Hope reed and Francis Marrone
The Secrets of Architectural Composition, by Nathaniel C. Curtis
Titles in production and scheduled for release later this year:
Tuscan Architecture by Auguste Grandjean de Montigny (Dover Publication)
Letarouilly on Renaissance Rome by J.B. Bayley (Dover publication)
The Classical Primer (an on line publication)
However, one of the more ambitious projects now under the umbrella of the Publications Committee is the CLASSICIST, a scholarly peer review journal that is finally on a 12 month cadence, #9 was delivered in December 2011. The CLASSICIST has advanced over the past 3 issues from being an informal, volunteer edited periodical to a more substantive and skillfully designed volume that is professionally produced and edited by Richard John of the University of Miami assisted by Hernika Taylor of the ICAA. The most recent issues have balanced the exacting critical writing expected of an academic journal in tandem with engaging visual content. This makes the CLASSICIST appealing to the varying audiences within the ICAA constituency. And it is beautiful; there are countless illustrations, photographs and drawings printed on elegant paper stock. Many of the early editions are no longer available, but you might want to request those that are for your library.
Please contact the ICAA to request your copy of #9 and, while doing that, I encourage you to become a member.
Please note: You can find the books on the ICAA list at www.classicist.org. In light of full disclosure, all purchases made through the Classicist Bookshop link to Amazon will return a very small stipend to the ICAA.
Link: classicist.org
