Virtual Weitzman School Talk: Kahn at 120

Weitzman Development and Alumni Relations in partnership with Designers & Books present a special conversation with Sue Ann Kahn (CW'61), Alexandra Tyng (MSED'77), and Nathaniel Kahn, the three children of influential architect Louis I. Kahn, to celebrate the 120th anniversary of his birth. Moderated by Richard Saul Wurman (BArch'58, MArch'59), the three speakers, all accomplished artists in their own right — in music, painting, and film—will discuss their father’s influence, as well recollections of him, his continuing legacy, and his relevance in the world today.

Hosted by Charlette Caldwell, (MSHP’16), Penn Weitzman Alumni Association Board President.

Untapped New York is a supporter of “Kahn at 120”

Moderator:

Richard Saul Wurman (BArch’58, MArch’59), FAIA 

Wurman studied under and worked for Louis I. Kahn and Charles Eames.  He is a member of AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale). Awards received include: University of Pennsylvania Penn Alumni’s 2014 Spirit Award; Art Director’s Hall of Fame, the Trinity College Dublin Annual Medal in Discourse; Dublin College James Joyce Award; Lifetime Achievement Award, Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt Museum, Guggenheim and Graham Foundation Fellowships, Ladislav Sutnar Prize and Boston Science Museum’s 50th Annual Bradford Washburn Award.  Wurman has created ninety books on architecture, cartography, design, sports and medicine. 

Wurman created and chaired the TED conference from 1984 until 2003 and created and chaired the TEDMED Conference from 1995 to 2010; and chaired IDCA 1972 and WWW Intellectual Jazz 2012.

Speakers:

Sue Ann Kahn (CW’61) has advocated for the preservation and restoration of her father’s architecture for over three decades. She has also been an active consultant and significant lender to the major exhibitions of his work. In 1996, she co-curated Louis I. Kahn Drawings: Travel Sketches and Synagogue Project for The Jewish Museum in New York. Most recently, she collaborated on The Color of Light, The Treasury of Shadows, an exhibition of Kahn’s pastels at his Kimbell Art Museum. She is a noted flutist, chamber musician, and teacher.

Alexandra Tyng (MSED’77) is a contemporary realist painter. She has received numerous national awards and has been featured in major art publications. Tyng’s work resides in the permanent collections of several U.S. museums including the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C., the New Britain Museum, and the Springfield Art Museum; and her work has been shown at the Butler Institute of American Art and the Lightner Museum. Her painting Jet Streams was chosen by authors David and Carl Little for the front cover of their recent book, Art of Acadia. Tyng is also the author of a book about her father’s philosophy of Architecture entitled Beginnings, published by Wiley in 1984. She is currently at work on a series of figurative paintings for a fall 2021 exhibition at Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia.

Nathaniel Kahn is an award-winning filmmaker. His 2018 film The Price of Everything premiered at Sundance, was broadcast on HBO, and was nominated for an Emmy. Kahn's My Architect, about his father, architect Louis Kahn, won the Directors Guild of America Award for outstanding direction of a documentary and was nominated for an Academy Award, two Independent Spirit Awards, and an Emmy. My Architect is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Kahn’s film Two Hands, about the late concert pianist Leon Fleisher, was also nominated for an Academy Award and an Emmy. Kahn's The Hunt for Planet B about the search for life in the universe, premieres at the SXSW Film Festival in March 2021.

Host:

Charlette Caldwell (MSHP’16) is the Penn Weitzman Alumni Association Board President. Caldwell is a Ph.D. student and Provost Diversity Fellow currently studying the history and theory of architecture at Columbia University. She received a Master of Science in Historic Preservation from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016 and continues to work part-time in Philadelphia on various preservation projects.

If you require any accessibility accommodation, such as live captioning, audio description, or a sign language interpreter, please email news@design.upenn.edu to let us know what you need. Please note, we require at least 48 hours’ notice. If you register within 48 hours of this event, we won’t be able to secure the appropriate accommodations.

Untapped New York is a supporter of “Kahn at 120”

Image Credit: George Pohl