Vaulting Ambition: The Guastavino Family and America's Great Public Spaces

FAIN: LP-50013-07

Boston Public Library (Boston, MA 02116-2813)
Earle Havens (Project Director: September 2006 to November 2007)
Susan L. Glover (Project Director: November 2007 to September 2009)

Planning of a gallery exhibition and a traveling panel exhibition with related public programs about how a family of first-generation immigrants created a business that helped to design and construct many of America's iconic public buildings between 1895 and 1962.

This Planning Project will plan an exhibition about the Guastavino Family, Spanish immigrants to America in 1881, who introduced cohesive construction and fireproof tile vaulting to the United States. Until 1960, the company was the creator of decorative and immensely effective domes and vaults in over 1,000 major buildings in the USA. The grant will fund curatorial meetings and design of an exhibition to be mounted at the Boston Public Library which will travel to the National Building Museum, and will then be converted into a traveling panel exhibition.