Fifteen years of lectures

By Temple Ligon

 

Beginning on the second Friday of February 2000 at the Columbia Museum of Art, I have given monthly lectures on architecture and urban design, and every now and then I’ll throw in painting. Think of that: 15 years times 12 months is 180 lectures. Also, for the past 10 years or so, I have been giving the same lecture twice, once at Still Hopes after lunch and again that night at six.

Annually I have observed birth months of three major players in the history of the visual arts: Michelangelo (March), Sir Christopher Wren (October), and South Carolina’s Jasper Johns (May), the world’s most expensive painter. I never tire of talking about these three, and I get the impression neither does my audience.

The history of the street plan of Paris is the topic every July, either on Bastille Day or close to it. The Bastille Day observances pushed us into a tradition of bringing our own Champagne to the lectures. I always supply the flutes. For the past several years we have taken the annual tradition and turned it into a monthly habit.

Food and drink worked their ways into our lecture schedule when we got kicked out of the CMA.

For the first several years, we took the auditorium at the Columbia Museum of Art, where they had a published rent of $300 for the 168 seats. I turned on that offer a bit by taking the first third, a hundred bucks, off the top. Then the remaining $200 was paid, rarely on time, but it was dedicated to my membership in the museum at one of the upper levels, whatever $2,400 bought at the time. Membership in the Taylor Society, I think it was. Anyway, I got invitations to just about everything the museum offered.

The fun part was once in a great while we actually filled all the seats at the museum, not every time, of course, but crowd pleasers like Picasso and Renzo Piano and the town plan of Rome in 1600 did the trick.

I shifted my timetable for the lectures and we began having them at night, starting at six. Problem was, I proved there was a Friday audience, and the education program at the museum wanted the auditorium Friday evenings. I was out of a lecture venue.

I lived in a penthouse flat at Senate Plaza, and the lectures worked well there on the 20^th floor. We had access to a full kitchen besides use of a decent lecture hall in my combined living/dining space, at least until I moved to the Kress Building.

Since I was paying apartment rent to the people working for Tom Prioreschi, the world’s greatest landlord, they agreed to let me use the former Rising High Main Street space for free.

When the Rising High space was occupied as a restaurant again, I had to move my lectures upstairs to my place overlooking Hampton Street and 150 Marriott windows. During most lectures I had as many people following what was going on across the street as I had following what I was saying in my living room.

I inherited enough money to take 80 days to follow Phileas Fogg’s footsteps around the world in the spring of 2012, and upon my return I upfitted my new house on Terrace Way with a lecture hall in the downstairs library.

For the past three years I have run out to Atlas Road on the second Friday of every month to rent 25 folding chairs at about a buck each. If we have more than 25 people, tough.

In another year, after I collect what little money is left with the Affinity people who lost to me in court in 2004, I should have enough to build a four-car garage under a three-bed apartment on my property facing Blossom Street. Maybe there I can shoehorn in a lecture hall.

(Affinity, by the way, is the same crowd who was dragged in before a federal grand jury in September 2001 to hear about jury tampering in my first trial in 1998. It’s my guess September 2001 was not the right time to give the federal legal team any new duties. There was no indictment.)

The next lecture is about Jean Nouvel, a French architect and a winner of the Pritzker Prize.

In October I’ll go back through the work of Sir Christopher Wren, who knew better than just about any architect in history how to hustle work. One feature in his business development strategy: Stay in good with the king.

For November we’ll cover New York City, where I hope to be on Thanksgiving Day. I am encouraging others to do the same, and maybe a review of the history of the streets of New York will prod a few along.

Don’t forget: Always on the second Friday, always at 1:30 at Still Hopes and always at 6:00 at 2225 Terrace Way. Bring sparkling white wine in whatever form you like – I like Prosecco – and expect to start close to six and finish up by seven.

 

 

 

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