Napoleon's Architects with Barry Bergdoll and Jean-Philippe Garric

Join the ICAA and the New York School of Interior Design (NYSID) for a lecture with Barry Bergdoll and Jean-Philippe Garric, who will be discussing the renowned work of "Napoleon's architects," Charles Percier (1764-1838) and Pierre Fontaine (1762-1853). Percier and Fontaine were not only the Emperor's official government architects, but two of the most celebrated teachers at the legendary Ecole des Beaux-Arts, responsible for developing the highly influential neoclassical Empire, or Directoire, style of design.

Barry Bergdoll is Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History at Columbia University and a curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. A specialist in the history of modern architecture, he curated numerous exhibitions at MoMA, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Musée d’Orsay, and other venues, including Mies In Berlin (2001), Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity (2009-2010), Latin America in Construction : Architecture 1955-1980 (2015) and Frank Lloyd Wright at 150 : Unpacking the Archive (2017). He is the author of the introduction to the recent Princeton Architectural Books publication of the works of Percier & Fontaine and the author or editor of numerous books including European Architecture 1750-1890 (2000).

Jean-Philippe Garric graduated as an architect in 1985. He is now professor of History of Architecture at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. After studying Italian architecture in Italy for four years, including two years as a fellow at the Villa Medici, he dedicated a PhD to the Italian models in the French books of architecture, which he published in 2002. Specialist of architectural books and theory in France from 1750 to 1914 he has studied extensively Charles Percier and Pierre Fontaine to whom he dedicated a biography (2012). In 2016 he became the curator of the first exhibition dedicated to Charles Percier, at the Bard Graduate Center, and, in 2018, one of the curators of the first exhibition dedicated to Jean Jacques Lequeu at the Petit Palais in Paris.

The ICAA was proud to announce the release of The Complete Works of Percier and Fontaine, published in partnership with Princeton Architectural Press, in the summer of 2018.

This lavish book is the first to collect the entire printed output of these two important architects and archeologists of Roman architecture—four volumes condensed into one—and serves as the definitive edition of their work. It is also the first volume of their work to be printed since 2001 and the first to include color images from Bibliotheque de l’institut national d'histoire de l'art.

This lecture is presented as part of The Françoise and Andrew Skurman Lecture Series on Classical French Architecture.