Directors' Night 2026 will feature three lectures by three current and past board members on their recent and ongoing research: Virginia Raguin, C. Ian Stevenson, and Jonathan Duval. Presented virtually via Zoom, the event will take place on Wednesday, March 18 at 7 PM. The three talks will be followed by a live Q&A with the speakers.
Virginia Raguin, "The Illuminated Window: Stories Across Time": Virginia Raguin's 2023 book The Illuminated Window: Stories Across Time (Reaktion Books) offers a series of vignettes of stained glass environments across patronage, countries, and time frames that enables an in-depth discussion of production as well as diversity of representation. In multiple instances, from the twelfth through the twenty-first centuries, we find conflict, commemoration, celebration, and innovation. The architecture is a frame, not only for the windows but for our own bodies as they move through space. Including windows from the cathedrals of Chartres, Canterbury, and Cologne, Paris’ Sainte Chapelle, Swiss guild-halls, the Pink Mosque, Iran, to Tiffany’s chapel for the World Columbian Exposition and Frank Lloyd Wright’s California homes, the text describes the site-specific decisions of production. This art results not from a single maker, but through the collaborative tension between the architect and stained glass artist and the concern of the patrons to address their audience.
Virginia Raguin is Emeritus Professor, College of the Holy Cross. She has also served on the NESAH board and has published widely on religion, stained glass and architecture ranging from medieval to contemporary times Her book Artistic Integration in Gothic Buildings (Toronto University Press, 1995) united major scholars. Stained Glass from its Origins to the Present (Thames & Hudson 2003) is a chronological survey. Her on-line book Style, Status, and Religion: America’s Pictorial Windows 1840-1950 presents a broad overview of the American experience and offers 450 downloadable images.
C. Ian Stevenson, "Destination 'Magic Town’: Selling Rumford, Maine, in the Nineteenth Century": In 1890, paper magnate Hugh Chisholm finished purchasing 1100 acres along the Androscoggin River at Rumford Falls, Maine, a waterpower source so profound it was nicknamed "New England’s Niagara." The falls offered more power than Chisholm needed for his own manufacturing and so it provided him the opportunity to transform this so-called wilderness into a thriving urban oasis. By 1906, one Boston newspaper dubbed Rumford Falls “Magic Town,” indicating the fulfillment of Chisholm's vision and the apex of capitalism. In this talk historian C. Ian Stevenson explains how Chisholm used visual media to sell his idea through a combination of printed promotional materials, such as illustrated pamphlets and postcards, and physical infrastructure, such as repeating railroad station architecture, to convince investors to purchase lots and build there.
C. Ian Stevenson is a Lecturer in the Preservation Studies Program at Boston University. Ian holds a PhD in American & New England Studies and an MA in Preservation Studies from Boston University. Ian’s research and publications include such topics as historic dams, railroad station architecture, Civil War veterans’ vacation homes, historic preservation photography, the creation of national parks, and river rewilding. Ian is working on a book manuscript titled Summer Homes of the Survivors: Buildings and Landscapes of the Civil War Vacation, 1878-1918, under contract with the University of Virginia Press. In addition to his academic work, Ian was the Director of Advocacy for Greater Portland Landmarks, a non-profit historic preservation organization in Portland, Maine, and an independent preservation consultant. Ian has served as a board member for the Vernacular Architecture Forum and the New England Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians, where he was also secretary.
Jonathan Duval, "Frank Chouteau Brown's Letters and Lettering (1902)": Frank Chouteau Brown's Letters and Lettering (1902) distilled for a generation of architects the history and practice of lettering in architecture. For decades, lettering on drawings by architects and engineers had begun to diverge, and Brown, like others, took the opportunity to argue for a distinct type lettering for architects. By collecting diverse samples from prominent contemporaneous designers, Brown promoted a style that emphasized an individual artistic identity. He pointedly distinguished this practice from lettering in engineering, which he portrayed as being purely mechanical and devoid of aesthetic sensibility. Brown’s work helped solidify lettering as a site of professional self-definition and the expression of artistic authority. Ultimately, the movement toward a unique graphic style allowed architects to signal their creative expertise at a glance, even in highly technical working drawings.
Jonathan Duval is the Assistant Curator of Architecture & Design at the MIT Museum. His research focuses on the history of architectural practice and pedagogy, architectural representation and graphics, and the bureaucratic intersections of architecture and technology. In addition to the MIT Museum, Jon has held curatorial positions, internships, and fellowships at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Sir John Soane’s Museum, and the RISD Museum. He studied architectural history at Tufts University and Brown University and is on the Board of Directors of the New England chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians.
