Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program Vassar College

Nicholas Adams, Art

phone: 845.437.5233
fax: 914-373-9232
email: nidams@vassar.edu
office: Taylor 102, Box 291

Nicholas Adams received his BA from Cornell University and his MA (1973) and Ph. d. (1977) from New York University's Institute of Fine Arts. He has taught at McGill University and Lehigh University and has been visiting professor at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, the Graduate School of Architecture at UCLA, the Graduate School of Architecture at Columbia University, and the University of Rome. He is a fellow of the American Academy in Rome and was visiting member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. At Vassar College he is Mary Conover Mellon professor in the history of architecture.

He has written on a wide variety of subjects related to Renaissance architecture. He has coedited (with C.L. Frommel) two volumes of architectural drawings by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger (MIT Press, 1994 and 1999) and coauthored (with Simon Pepper) a book on military architecture and siege warfare (University of Chicago Press, 1986). With Laurie Nussdorfer he contributed an essay on Italian urbanism to The Renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo: The Representation of Architecture (1994). He has published essays on Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Baldassarre Peruzzi, and the town of Pienza and is especially interested in urban history and the history of the architectural profession.

He also works on contemporary architecture. He edited an issue of the magazine Casabella (with Joan Ockman) on American architecture (December 1999) and has written essays, for the same magazine, on the restoration of Grand Central Station, the painter Paul Cadmus, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Stockholm subway among other subjects. At present he is preparing an edition of the writings of Lucy Maynard Salmon (with Bonnie Smith) to be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press (2000), an essay on military architecture of the Renaissance (for Electa), and an essay on Peter Eisenman's House III.

He has served as editor of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians and of the College Art Association Monograph series and his reviews have appeared in numerous magazines including Casabella, Speculum, Utopian Studies, Renaissance Quarterly, the Times Literary Supplement, Technology and Culture, and Art Bulletin.

Mr. Adams is responsible for instruction in post-medieval architectural history in the Art Department and teaches courses in the architecture of early modern Europe, modern and postmodern architecture.

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