Though the “Renegades: Bruce Goff and the American School of Architecture” exhibition at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art had to close early due to the Spring 2020 COVID-19 quarantine, it is now available online in a fully immersive online, interactive version.
“Now you can take a virtual reality tour of the exhibition on any web browser,” Angela Person, assistant professor of architecture, said in a recent interview with KGOU. “You can move through the space, and it feels like you’re visiting the museum in person. And if you want to take a closer look at something, all you do is click it and you can view it up close.”
The online version of the exhibition was made possible through a collaborative partnership between Angela Person; Somik Ghosh, associate professor of construction science; and Haley Sandell and Avery Hightower; members of the Gibbs College communications team.
To access the full tour, please click the link below.
Renegades: Bruce Goff and the American School of Architecture, January - March 2020
The American School refers to the imaginative school of design and practice that developed under the guidance of Bruce Goff, Herb Greene and others at the University of Oklahoma in the 1950s and ‘60s.
Students were taught to look to sources beyond the accepted canon of Western architecture and to find inspiration in everyday objects, the natural landscape and the designs of Native American tribes. The results of this pedagogical experiment—the fantastic environments imagined on paper and through built works—are characterized by experimental forms, attention to context and material resourcefulness. The architects of the American School have long been characterized as renegades, iconoclasts and apostates.
Visitors at the exhibition Renegades: Bruce Goff and the American School of Architecture at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art view the “Bruce Goff” panel of the exhibition in January. Photo courtesy of Rene Peralta.
Renegades: Bruce Goff and the American School of Architecture tells this story of dramatic change in three sections. Moving Past the Beaux-Arts and Bauhaus, the first section, highlights the evolution in American architecture schools at the time. The second section, “Do Not Try to Remember”: The American School Curriculum, showcases the curriculum and student work produced at OU as well as the work of faculty at the time. The American School Legacy, the third section, highlights the contextual, resourceful and experimental built works of American School architects around the world.
A project designed by Gibbs College of Architecture faculty member Austin Lightle has been selected for BuildFest 2026, a national art and architecture festival held at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in New York, on the historic grounds of the 1969 Woodstock Music Festival.
Two Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture alumni are helping shape recommendations that could influence affordable housing design and construction across Oklahoma.
The University of Oklahoma Libraries recently welcomed Carl Siegel as an Architecture Librarian and Archivist and Assistant Professor. In his role, Siegel supports students, faculty and staff across the Gibbs College of Architecture while also serving as archivist for the American School of Architecture Archives.
