The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, in conjunction with The Museum of Modern Art, will present Women in Modernism - Making Places in Architecture, a colloquium held in the Celeste Bartos Theater at MoMA on October 25.

The main speaker, Gwendolyn Wright, Professor of Architecture at Columbia University and a host on the PBS TV show, History Detectives, intends “to look closely at networks of power in the profession, and specifically to ask how women have fared in this system. It’s the start of a conversation that aims to clarify processes of decision-making, to challenge entrenched or archaic inequalities, to explore alternative possibilities.”

The purpose of the Women in Modernism colloquium is to explore the roles that architectural arbiters of both past and present - have had and continue to have in shaping the history, and defining the legacy, of modern architecture in the United States - a process that often overlooked until very recently the contributions of women. Curators, architects, historians and critics will address the process of selection and the values they employ each time they design a course or exhibition, or publish a book or article. Barry Bergdoll, the Museum’s Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, will moderate the panel conversation.

Participants include Sarah Herda, Director, The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Chicago; Toshiko Mori, architect and Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture and Chair of the Department of Architecture, Harvard University; Karen Stein, former Editorial Director, Phaidon Press; and with a welcome by Beverly Willis, FAIA. The event will take place at The Celeste Bartos Theater, The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building.