National Trust for Historic Preservation Gives Highest Award to Vincent J. Scully

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has presented the Louise du Pont Crowninshield Award, its highest accolade, to renowned Yale professor Vincent J. Scully.

Scully, Sterling Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at Yale University and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Miami, was honored by the organization during its 2009 National Preservation Conference in Nashville, Tenn.

Considered one of the most important interpreters of art and architecture of our times, Scully has inspired generations of students for more than 60 years, and Yale alumni often cite Scully’s lecture courses on the history of art and architecture as their most profound academic experience. The author of more than 20 books, he has taught, trained and mentored many of the nation’s foremost art historians, artists, architects, preservationists and critics, including Paul Goldberger, Maya Lin, Charles Gwathmey and Robert A.M. Stern.

In creating a professorship at the Yale School of Architecture, Pritzker Prize laureate Sir Norman Foster recently cited the “incredible impact” Scully had on his career.

Scully recognized early on that the sweeping “urban renewal” efforts of the 1960s and 1970s were destroying much of the architectural heritage of America’s cities, and he became a leader in the preservationist movement and indefatigable champion of its cause. A trustee emeritus of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Scully also condemned the unchecked sprawl of American cities and suburbs, and found much inspiration for what a city should be in the New Haven he remembered as a boy growing up there.

Scully enrolled as a student at Yale at the age of 16. More than 65 years later, Stern, the dean of Yale’s School of Architecture, announced the establishment of the Vincent J. Scully Jr. Visiting Professorship in Architectural History at Yale. Scully has received the National Medal of Arts, the United States’ highest honor for artists and arts patrons, and dozens of other accolades. In 1999, the National Building Museum endowed the Vincent Scully Prize to recognize exemplary practice, scholarship or criticism in architecture, historic preservation and urban design. Among the recipients of the Vincent Scully Prize are Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Jane Jacobs, The Aga Kahn, Prince Charles and Phyllis Lambert.

“There is no candidate more worthy of the National Trust’s highest honor for lifetime achievement than Professor Vincent Scully,” said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. “He is a hero of mine, as he is to so many others who appreciate great design and great architecture. Through his life’s work, Vincent Scully has helped preserve the heritage of our nation.”