CLARK ART INSTITUTE RESEARCH AND ACADEMIC PROGRAM FELLOW PRESENTS LECTURE ON AIR CONDITIONING’S INFLUENCE ON ARCHITECTURE

For Immediate Release
November 22, 2019

Williamstown, Massachusetts—On Tuesday, December 3, at 5:30 pm, Manton Fellow and Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore Jiat-Hwee Chang presents “The (Trans)formation of Air-conditioning Complexes: Architectural Histories and Futures from Asia.” The lecture will be held in the Clark’s auditorium, located in the Manton Research Center, and is free and open to the public.

Chang’s lecture examines how cities and urban populations around the world became dependent on air-conditioning and how air-conditioning dependency has transformed built environments, material culture, and social practices. To answer these questions, Chang draws from the architectural and sociotechnical histories of air-conditioning in Singapore and Doha.

Chang is the author of A Genealogy of Tropical Architecture: Colonial Networks, Nature and Technoscience (2016), which was awarded an International Planning History Society Book Prize in 2018, and was shortlisted for the European Association for Southeast Asian Studies Humanities Book Prize in 2017. He is also the co-editor of Non West Modernist Past (2011) and Southeast Asia’s Modern Architecture: Questions in Translation, Epistemology and Power (2019). At the Clark, he will be working on an architectural and socio-technical history of air-conditioning and climate change in urban Asia.

The next Research and Academic Program lecture is Manton Post-doctoral Fellow Caitlin R. Woolsey’s “New Old Media: Tape, Type, and the Undiscovered Collages of Henri Chopin” on Tuesday, February 18, 2020, at 5:30 pm.

ABOUT THE CLARK
The Clark Art Institute, located in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, is one of a small number of institutions internationally that is both an art museum and a center for research, critical discussion, and higher education in the visual arts. Opened in 1955, the Clark houses exceptional European and American paintings and sculpture, extensive collections of master prints and drawings, English silver, and early photography. Acting as convener through its Research and Academic Program, the Clark gathers an international community of scholars to participate in a lively program of conferences, colloquia, and workshops on topics of vital importance to the visual arts. The Clark library, consisting of more than 275,000 volumes, is one of the nation’s premier art history libraries. The Clark also houses and co-sponsors the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art.

The Clark, which has a three-star rating in the Michelin Green Guide, is located at 225 South Street in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Galleries are open Tuesday through Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm; open daily in July and August. Admission is $20; free year-round for Clark members, children 18 and younger, and students with valid ID. Free admission is available through several programs, including First Sundays Free; a local library pass program; EBT Card to Culture; and Blue Star Museums. For more information on these programs and more, visit clarkart.edu or call 413 458 2303.

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