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Wiebenson, Dora

    Full Name: Wiebenson, Dora

    Other Names:

    • Dora Louise Wiebenson

    Gender: female

    Date Born: 1926

    Place Born: Cleveland, Cuyahoga, OH, USA

    Home Country/ies: United States

    Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre) and sculpture (visual works)


    Overview

    Architectural historian. Wiebenson was the daughter of a building contractor, Edward Ralph Wiebenson, and his wife Jeannette Rodier (Wiebenson). After graduating from Vassar College with an A. B. in 1946 she entered Harvard University, securing a second Bachelor’s degree in Architecture in 1951. She moved to New York where she worked as a designer and draftsperson in various architectural offices in New York City between 1951 and 1958. That year she was awarded an A.M. from New York University, continuing for her doctorate. While working on her Ph. D., she acted as an independent architectural consultant in New York City. She wrote her dissertation under Walter F. Friedländer on the history of the Greek revival in architecture, receiving her Ph.D. in 1964. She edited the Institute of Fine Art’s periodical, Marsyas for 1965 (issues 1962-1964). She was appointed a lecturer in architecture at Columbia University in 1966. Wiebenson moved to the University of Maryland, College Park as an associate professor in 1968. She published a revised version of her Ph.D. thesis in 1969 as Sources of Greek Revival Architecture. In 1972 he accepted the position of professor of architectural history at University of Virginia, Charlottesville. She was director of the Society of Architectural Historians between 1974 and 1977. She was promoted to professor of architectural history and chair of division in 1977. The following year, her book on landscape architecture in France, The Picturesque Garden in France, appeared. She retired from the University in 1992. A Dora Wiebenson Graduate Student Prize was begun in 1999 by the Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture (HECAA) in her honor.


    Selected Bibliography

    [dissertation:] Stuart and Revett’s ‘Antiquities of Athens’: the Influence of Archaeological Publications on the Neoclassical Concept of Hellenism. New York University, 1964; Sources of Greek Revival Architecture. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1969; The Picturesque Garden in France. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978.





    Citation

    "Wiebenson, Dora." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/wiebensond/.


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