Maximilian Godefroy and St. Mary’s Chapel:
The Invention of the Gothic Revival for America
By Richard Guy Wilson
The Godefroy Lecture was presented on Oct. 11, 2014, at 2 p.m. by Richard Guy Wilson, who holds the Commonwealth Professor’s Chair in Architectural History at the University of Virginia (Thomas Jefferson’s University) in Charlottesville, Virginia. His specialty is the architecture, design and art of the 18th to the 21st century both in America and abroad.
Richard Guy Wilson
Wilson has received a number of academic honors, among them a Guggenheim fellow, prizes for distinguished writing, and in 1986 he was made an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). He received the outstanding professor award at the University of Virginia in 2001. He has directed the Victorian Society’s Nineteenth Century Summer School since 1979 that has been located in Boston, Philadelphia and currently Newport, RI. He has served as an advisor and commentator for a number of television programs on PBS, A&E, and sixty-seven segments of America’s Castles.
A frequent lecturer for universities, museums and professional groups, he has also published widely with many articles and reviews to his credit. Wilson has been the curator and author for major museum exhibitions such as The American Renaissance, 1876-1917, The Art that is Life: The Arts and Crafts Movement in America, The Machine Age in America, 1918-1941, The Making of Virginia Architecture, and Jefferson’s design for the University of Virginia. A major exhibit on the Colonial Revival will be at the Virginia Museum and other venues in 2015-16.