The National Building Museum has named art historian and former Museum of Modern Art curator Barry Bergdoll the 2025 recipient of the Vincent Scully Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in the architecture field. The honor recognizes Bergdoll’s groundbreaking exhibitions and scholarship, which have consistently framed architecture as inseparable from broader social and political issues.
“Barry Bergdoll embodies the spirit and intent of the Vincent Scully Prize,” said Aileen Fuchs, president and executive director of the National Building Museum. “Through his scholarship and exhibitions, he has opened up architecture to wider audiences, made visible its relevance to our daily lives, and helped us see the built environment with new eyes. We are thrilled to honor his remarkable impact with this year’s prize.”
A Public Celebration in Washington
Bergdoll will be formally honored at the National Building Museum on October 22, 2025, with an evening program featuring remarks from the honoree and a conversation with Philip Kennicott, Pulitzer Prize–winning critic at The Washington Post.
Established in 1999, the Vincent Scully Prize recognizes excellence in architecture, preservation, and urban design. Bergdoll joins past recipients including Jane Jacobs, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Walter Hood, Theaster Gates, Laurie Olin, and Mabel O. Wilson.
Redefining the Architecture Exhibition
Bergdoll, who has taught art history at Columbia University for more than 30 years, is widely celebrated for expanding architecture’s cultural reach. From 2007 to 2014, he served as Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA, where he challenged the traditional, monographic exhibition model.
Among his most influential shows were:
- Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront (2009–10), which anticipated climate change adaptation strategies.
- Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream (2012), addressing post-recession housing.
- Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955–1980 (2015), exploring design and geopolitics across the continent.
He extended this approach with Reset: Toward a New Commons (2022) at the Center for Architecture in New York, continuing to position architecture as a lens on urgent contemporary issues.
Scholarship with Reach
The Scully Prize jury, chaired by Paul Goldberger and including Nancy Levinson, Stephen Luoni, Toshiko Mori, and Andrea Roberts, praised Bergdoll’s ability to bridge academia and public discourse.
“We took special note of the extent to which his career has been devoted not solely to scholarship, but also to public outreach,” the jury wrote. “Barry Bergdoll has consistently presented architecture not as hermetic, but as enmeshed in wider issues of society, politics, economics, and culture. The jury particularly recognizes Bergdoll’s transformative tenure as Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA, beginning at the pivotal moment of the 2008 financial crisis. At a time when architectural exhibitions were highly specialized and tended toward the monographic, Bergdoll mounted exhibitions that brought key social issues to the forefront, helping to redefine the museum’s role for the public.”
Looking Ahead
Bergdoll’s impact extends beyond MoMA. He has organized major exhibitions at the Musée d’Orsay, Centre Canadien d’Architecture, Banamex Cultural Center, and Bard Graduate Center, where he is currently preparing a show on the drawings of Viollet-le-Duc (opening January 2026).
He is the author of numerous works, including European Architecture: 1750–1890, studies of Schinkel, Mies van der Rohe, and Léon Vaudoyer, and co-editor of Marcel Breuer: Building Global Institutions. His next major publication will expand on his 2013 Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery of Art.
With the Vincent Scully Prize, Bergdoll joins an circle of leading thinkers who have changed the way architecture is understood—not only within the profession but in the public realm.
