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LECTURE SERIES
On the Wings of Modernism: The United States Air Force Academy
Saturday, October 12, 2024
2:00 – 3:00 p.m.
The Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum presents the 2024 lecture series, featuring a wide range of speakers offering diverse perspectives and unique insights on Pikes Peak regional history. Admission is free, but registration is required.
ABOUT THE PROGRAM
In May 1955 the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) presented the first public exhibition of their United States Air Force Academy design to members of Congress, Air Force officials, the national press, and the general public at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. The exhibition, which cost over $100,000 to produce, would be key to the Congressional debates and public response that followed, as the firm sought to justify their modernist design and free it from any lingering socialist and historicist associations. To convey this message, SOM hired leading exhibition designers, model builders, graphic artists, and photographers – a cast that included luminaries such as Herbert Bayer and Ansel Adams. This talk will explore how SOM presented this exhibition, interweaving myths and metaphors of flight and the American West with those of architectural modernism, and how it ultimately resulted in the Academy complex as it exists today.
ABOUT THE PRESENTER
Robert Nauman earned his Ph.D. in art and architectural history from the University of New Mexico and currently teaches in the Art and Art History Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His book On the Wings of Modernism: the United States Air Force Academy was nominated for the Alice Davis Hitchcock Award for distinguished scholarship by a North American author in the history of architecture. Subsequent publications have addressed specific Academy architects as well as preservation issues as they relate to the Academy design.
Dr. Nauman has served on the Boards of Directors for the Society of Architectural Historians and Docomomo US. In 2021, he was appointed by Governor Polis and History Colorado to serve on the Colorado Historic Preservation Review Board. He is also a consultant for projects at the United States Air Force Academy.
