The 25 – Richard Guy Wilson

Architectural historian Richard Guy Wilson is Commonwealth Professor Emeritus in Architectural History at the University of Virginia. He has received numerous awards, including an Honorary AIA membership, and many grants.

His specialty is scholarship involving the architecture, design, and art of the 18th to the 21st centuries in America and abroad. His research and publications and exhibitions have ranged from the architecture of Thomas Jefferson to the Arts & Crafts and related movements in the United States and Europe, the history of cities and especially the American suburb and utopian plans, the foundations of Modernism, the revival of classicism in the late 19th century, and mid-20th-century modern houses and furniture design.

His books, which include “The American Renaissance” (1979), “McKim, Mead & White, Architects” (1982), “Machine Age in America” (1986), “Thomas Jefferson’s Academic Village” (1993, 2009), “The Colonial Revival House” (2004), and “Edith Wharton at Home” (2012) are considered classics.

Wilson, who has taught the Victorian Society’s Summer School for 43 years, has lectured at more than 600 universities, museums, and historical societies and is a frequent television commentator on American and modern architecture and design.