Denise Scott Brown did not pull any punches during two public appearances last week at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she staunchly defended her contributions—both built and theoretical—to the architecture and planning professions over the course of a prolific career spanning more than half a century. “The sexism I discovered rose to exponential heights when Bob [Venturi] and I married,” Scott Brown, recalling the early critics who accused her of leeching off her husband, told a largely female audience at a panel discussion on Wednesday. “I had the usual, run-of-the-mill horror stories, and then all these extra ones.”
These appearances, which included a two-hour lecture in a packed auditorium Tuesday evening, were two of Scott Brown’s more high-profile public responses since two Harvard students launched a petition seven months ago calling for retroactive acknowledgement of her contributions to the 1991 Pritzker Prize, which was solely awarded to her collaborator and husband, Robert Venturi. (The petition, which has 18,455 signatures to date, went viral and garnered national media attention. Nine Pritzker Prize winners have signed, including Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, and Venturi, who wrote, “Denise Scott Brown is my inspiring and equal partner.”)
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