The first time I visited the new Barnes Museum building along Ben Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, I was struck by the strong influence of Louis Kahn on the design, despite the opposite aesthetic entailed in the old Albert Barnes collection itself.
Al Filreis is Kelly Professor, Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House, Director of the Center
for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Co-Director of PennSound, and Publisher of Jacket2—all at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his books are Secretaries of the Moon,
Wallace Stevens & the Actual World, Modernism from Left to Right, and Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-60. He is currently writing a book on the art & avant-garde of 1960. He has taught a massive open online course, "ModPo," to 165,000 participants in 192 countries since 2012.
Co-founder & co-director of PennSound—50,000 files ][ 12 million downloads annually
Teacher & host, "Kelly Writers House Fellows"—since 1999 ][ Susan Sontag, John Ashbery, Jamaica Kincaid, Laurie Anderson, Adrienne Rich, Joan Didion, John Edgar Wideman & more