Judith Dupré

Judith Dupré
Judith Dupré
Born	Providence, Rhode Island
Nationality	American
Occupation	Author
Website	Judith Dupré

Judith Dupré (born in Providence, Rhode Island)^[1] is a writer, structural historian, and public speaker. She is the New York Times bestselling author of several works of narrative nonfiction on art, design, and architecture. She has been described as “a scholar with a novelist’s eye for detail and a journalist’s easy style.”^[2]

Life and career

Dupré was born in Providence, Rhode Island into a family of architectural preservationists.^[3] She earned a M.Div. from Yale Divinity School in 2011. She is a fellow of Saybrook College at Yale University and a Dominique de Menil scholar at the Institute of Sacred Music, also at Yale. She received her undergraduate degree from Brown University in 1978 and did postgraduate work at Hunter College and the Open Atelier of Design and Architecture, both in New York City.

Dupré serves on the editorial board of Faith & Form,^[4] a journal of the American Institute of Architects' Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art and Architecture. She has curated and consulted on numerous contemporary art exhibitions, including an installation of temporary refugee housing on Sterling Quad at Yale Divinity School in 2007.^[5] From 1979 through 1990, she curated the Harry N. Abrams Art Collection, an important collection of Pop Art assembled by the art book publisher Harry Abrams.

Publications

Her books have been translated into fourteen languages. Their unusual shapes and bindings echo their subject matter,^[3] and honor the tradition and material presence of the illuminated book.^[6] Skyscrapers is 18” high.^[7] Bridges is a yard-wide when open, to accommodate its panoramic photos of the longest structures.^[8] The cover of Churches is split down the center so that it opens like the doors of a cathedral.^[9] The cover of Monuments: America’s History in Art and Memory is a replica, in raised relief, of ancient stones; its title lettering was drawn for the book by Nicholas Benson.^[2] Page designs include deep-captioned photographs, floating quotations, timelines, and sidebar explorations.^[10] The page layouts suggest a kinetic reading experience beyond the turning of successive pages, and have been designed to create individualized reading experiences, where the reader chooses how to engage the array of images, essays and marginal commentaries.^[11]

She is the author of the 2016 book titled One World Trade Center: Biography of the Building and official biographer of One World Trade Center.^[12] Dupré is the only author given unfettered access to the Trade Center site, team, and archives by The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey.^[13] She presents the story of the new World Trade Center in its entirety: from Mayor Rudy Giuliani's vow to rebuild on September 12, 2001, through the complex, often contentious interactions between multiple public and private agencies with a stake in the project, to the placing of One World Trade Center’s spire in 2013. The book incorporates over seventy interviews with major participants, including architects David M. Childs, Daniel Libeskind, Santiago Calatrava, and Michael Arad.^[13]

Awards

The National Endowment for the Humanities named Dupré an inaugural Public Scholar in 2015.^[14] She has received awards and fellowships from Yale University, New York State Council on the Arts, Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is a Fellow of the MacDowell Colony, the oldest artists’ colony in the U.S. In 2004, the Westchester Arts Council awarded her the Artists Award, the county’s highest cultural honor, citing her as a “champion of the arts and literacy.”

Bibliography

One World Trade Center: Biography of the Building (2016). Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0316336319
Skyscrapers (2013, 2008, 1997). Black Dog & Leventhal. 2013 ed.: ISBN 978-1-57912-942-2 / 2008 ed: ISBN 1-57912-787-8 / 1996 ed.: ISBN 978-1-884822-45-2
Bridges: A History of the World's Most Spectacular Spans (2017, 1997). Black Dog & Leventhal. 2017 ed.: ISBN 978-0316507943 / 1997 ed.: ISBN 978-1-884822-75-9
Churches (2001). HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-019438-3
Monuments: America's History in Art and Memory (2007). Random House. ISBN 978-1-4000-6582-0
Full of Grace: Encountering Mary in Faith, Art and Life (2010). Random House; ISBN 1-4000-6585-2

References

^ Brief autobiography at judithdupre.com
^ ^a ^b Strauss, Barry. “Carved in Stone: On Monuments: America's History in Art and Memory by Judith Dupré,” The New Criterion, vol. 26, March, 2008, 69.
^ ^a ^b Gonzalez, Susan (25 April 2008). "Divinity student's books pay homage to architectural marvels". Yale Bulletin and Calendar. No. 36:27. Retrieved 20 February 2020.
^ "Faith & Form - the interfaith forum on religion, art and architecture". Faith & Form. Retrieved 2018-04-13.
^ "Yale Bulletin and Calendar". archives.news.yale.edu. Retrieved 2018-04-13.
^ Frederick M. Winship, "Churches Architecture is Subject of New Books," United Press International, October 18, 2001.
^ Lucie Young, "A Book Shaped Like Its Subject Matter,” The New York Times, September 26, 1996, C3.
^ DeLony, Eric (1998). "Bridges". IA, The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology. 24 (2): 56. JSTOR 40968442.
^ Larry B. Stammer, “Houses of the Holy,” Los Angeles Times, June 30, 2002, pp 8, 9.
^ Patricia Dane Rogers, “Vertical Reality,” The Washington Post, Nov. 7, 1996, 5.
^ Prescott, Theodore. “Monuments: America’s History in Art and Memory,” American Arts Quarterly, Summer 2008.
^ "One WTC Book: Biography of the Building - Judith Dupré". One WTC Book: Biography of the Building. Retrieved 2018-04-12.
^ ^a ^b Skinner, David (Summer 2016). "Touring the New World Trade Center with Its Official Biographer". Humanities. Vol. 37, no. 3.
^ "Q&A with NEH Public Scholar Judith Dupre". National Endowment for the Humanities. 2016-01-15. Retrieved 2018-04-12.