Jennifer Gray

Jennifer Gray is Curator of Drawings and Archives at Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library at Columbia University and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. She also has taught at Cornell University and The Museum of Modern Art. She studies modern architectural history, with an emphasis on how designers used architecture, cities, and landscapes to advance social and spatial justice at the turn of the 20th century. She also is interested in contemporary social practice, curatorial practice, the history of architecture exhibitions, and questions of critical heritage.

Gray’s research focuses on modern architecture and social politics in the United States, especially as advanced by designers, landscape architects, and social scientists in Chicago, such as Dwight Perkins, Jens Jensen, Frank Lloyd Wright, Jane Addams, and Charles Zueblin. Gray recently curated two exhibitions on Wright, one at the Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli and a major retrospective, Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive, at The Museum of Modern Art. She is co-author and co-editor of Frank Lloyd Wright: Unpacking the Archive and author of Frank Lloyd Wright tra America e Italia. She publishes frequently on Wright and serves on the Board of Directors for the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. She collaborates with the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery, most recently on the exhibition Model Projections, which explored questions of architectural representation. She also works with the Onera Foundation to advance questions of historic preservation and frequently lectures at MoMA. Her work has been published in journals of architectural history and critical heritage, and she currently is developing a book project on the architect Dwight Perkins and social practice in laissez-faire Chicago. She has won several awards and fellowships, including a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. She received her PhD from Columbia University.