Architecture critic Paul Goldberger is featured VCU School of the Arts speaker Pulitzer Prize winner visits senior interior design class, inaugurates Windmueller Arts Series

By Malorie Burkett

Pulitzer Prize-winner Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for The New Yorker, shared his architectural expertise with Virginia Commonwealth University students and faculty during the newly established Windmueller Arts Series.

Goldberger, who writes The New Yorker’s celebrated “Sky Line” column, joined the magazine in July of 1997 following a 25-year career at The New York Times, where he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for his architecture criticism.

Since July 2004 he also has been dean of the Parsons School of Design, a division of The New School University in New York.

Goldberger also visited a senior seminar interior design class in VCU’s Pollak building, where he entertained students’ questions and spoke about his career as an architecture critic.

“Architecture is a very unusual art unlike music, film dance or painting. It’s always there and we can never avoid it,” said Goldberger. “I have spent most of my life trying to build bridges and make connections between architecture and how it connects with the real world.”

Goldberger is the author of several books, most recently his chronicle of the process of rebuilding Ground Zero, titled “Up From Zero: Architecture, Politics and the Rebuilding of New York.” He also has written “The City Observed: New York, The Skyscraper,” “On the Rise: Architecture and Design in a Post-Modern Age,” “Above New York,” and “The World Trade Center Remembered.”

Goldberger appears frequently on film and television to discuss art, architecture and cities. He recently appeared in Ric Burns’s documentary film on New York City and in Ken Burns’ public television film about Frank Lloyd Wright. He regularly appears on “CBS Sunday Morning.”

The Windmueller Arts Series was established through a gift from the estate of Otti Y. Windmueller. Windmueller received her bachelor of fine arts degree from VCU and taught fashion design for 29 years in the VCU School of the Arts. The Windmueller Arts Series each year will host prominent national experts who will share their expertise in the arts with VCU students and the Richmond community.