Joseph Connors

Francesco Borromini and the Graphite Revolution in Architectural Draftsmanship

Joseph Connors, a New Yorker by birth and early education, studied classical languages at Boston College and Cambridge University, followed by art history at Harvard (Ph.D. 1978). He has taught at the University of Chicago (1975-80) and Columbia University (1980-2001), where he received the President’s Award for Outstanding Teaching. He has held fellowships from the ACLS, NEH, Guggenheim Foundation, CASVA at the National Gallery of Art, Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, All Souls College Oxford, and the Clark Art Institute, and he was Slade Professor at Oxford in 1999. He was elected to the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca in Rome in 1993, and to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia in 2006. In 1988-92 he was director of the American Academy in Rome and in 2002-10 director of Villa I Tatti, the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence. He has served on the advisory board of the Centro Palladio in Vicenza since 1993 and was president of the Renaissance Society of America in 2014-16. He has published books on Baroque architecture, Roman urban planning, architecture in prints, Piranesi, and Frank Lloyd Wright. He is in the process of completing the long-term project of a comprehensive monograph on the Swiss-born Roman Baroque architect, Francesco Borromini (1599-1667), continuing themes of architecture and society that inform all his writing.