Emmet Gowin Introducing the Newest
Members of the Class of 1980: 30th Reunion Honorary Classmates
Emmet Gowin and Michael Graves Emmet Gowin Professor of Visual Arts in the LewisCenter for the Arts A legendary professor at Princeton for over 36 years, since 1973, Emmet Gowin is retiring in 2010. Gowin was the first "art” photographer to teach at Princeton. Today, as noted in a recent PAW, Gowin is internationally renowned as "one of the great photographers of our time, an artist of consummate technical skill and deep poetic feeling.”
Gowin first gained attention with his intimate portraits of his wife and family. His almost exclusive use of a large format camera led to both optical and darkroom experiments. Using a 4x5 lens with an 8x10 camera allowed Gowin to expose the full image circle, surrounded by a dramatic vignette, in his family portraits and rural landscapes. Beginning with a trip to WashingtonState soon after Mt.Saint Helens erupted, Gowin began taking aerial photographs. For the next 20 years, Gowin captured strip mining sites, nuclear testing fields, large-scale agricultural fields and other scars in the natural landscape.
Gowin received the President's Award for Distinguished Teaching at PrincetonUniversity in 1997 and the Behrman Award in 2006. He is also a recipient of a Guggenheim (1974) and two NEA Fellowships (1977 and 1979) and awards from the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (1983), the Seattle Arts Commission (1980), the 1983 Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts from the State of Pennsylvania, the 1992 Friends of Photography Peer Award, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts for 1993-94.
His students through the ages (some of them are our children) are passionate about him. They flocked to NYC’s Central Park from far away to surprise and honor him on a big teaching anniversary. Princeton President Shirley Tilghman frequently cites the perennially oversubscribed Emmet Gowin course as an important reason for the Aspire Campaign’s needs in the Creative and Performing Arts. "It’s hard to imagine anyone better suited to teaching bright undergraduates — virtually none of whom comes to Princeton planning to become a photographer — than Gowin, who approaches the world with curiosity and wonder and a deep humility before the great mysteries of life.” PAW October 21, 2009.
Gowin was honored with a show at the University Art Museum recently that included not only 25 of his own pictures but also one each from 20 of his students, going back to the mid-1970s, some of whom have become celebrated photographers in their own right. Professor Gowin has not been an honorary classmate in the past.
Michael Graves Robert Schirmer Professor of Architecture, Emeritus
Graves spent his teaching career at Princeton, arriving in 1962. He recalls his first students, many of whom went on to become deans of architecture schools, as "unforgettable.” He relishes the memory of how he was "in the library all the time because you had to stay a step or two ahead of your students.”
Graves has been in the forefront of architectural design for more than 35 years and has designed more than 200 buildings. Some of his best-known projects include the Humana Building, Louisville, KY; Disney Corporate Headquarters, Burbank,CA; The Netherlands' Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Sport; The Hague; and the much-celebrated interpretive design scaffolding for the Washington Monument Restoration, Washington D.C.
Graves has become a household name known worldwide not only for his colorful postmodern buildings (e.g. the Swan and Dolphin hotels at Disney in Orlando), but for his Alessi whistling-bird teakettles and beautifully designed domestic products sold at Target tstores in the United States. He directs the firm Michael Graves & Associates, which has offices in Princeton and in New York City.
Graves was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1979. In 1999, Graves was awarded the National Medal of Arts and in 2001 the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects, the highest honor the AIA confers to an individual, recognizing a person whose significant body of work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture. Graves has won more than 120 other awards and citations including the National Medal of Arts presented to by President Clinton in 1996 for his exceptional achievements in architecture, design and education.
Graves retired from the University in 2001. "‘Thirty-nine years. You’ve got to be happy if you’re going to stay that long. But it was probably bad for business.’ He only half jokes. In coming to Princeton, he laments, he had to give up the prospect of designing a building on campus because a University policy prohibits commissioning projects from tenured faculty members.” PAW November 17, 2004 Professor Graves has not been an honorary classmate in the past.
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