Gregory Dreicer is an American curatorial strategist, historian, experience designer, exhibition developer, and museum manager. Dreicer's multidisciplinary projects, which engage audiences in discovering and exploring everyday environments, have led public discussion on issues including infrastructure, landscape, architecture, city planning, community identity, preservation, design, and sustainability. Dreicer's work is known for innovative strategies in project conception and design that create memorable experiences.[1]

Gregory Dreicer
NationalityAmerican
Occupation(s)curatorial strategist, historian and museum manager

Public history and museums

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Dreicer's projects, through a multidisciplinary focus on story, identity, and place, emphasize the indivisible nature of natural, built, and social environments. Embedding inclusivity, questioning myths, and exploring multiple perspectives characterize pathbreaking projects aimed at engaging broad audiences. Dreicer has developed exhibitions and programs for organizations including the Vancouver Public Library, Museum of Vancouver, National Building Museum, Museum of the City of New York, and the Smithsonian Institution Museum on Main Street program.[2] Dreicer's projects have featured communities including Black Americans, Latinx, Indigenous peoples, and Jews. At the Museum of Vancouver, Dreicer developed an institutional vision based on social connection. At the Chicago Architecture Foundation, Dreicer developed the institutional thematic framework, was responsible for the creation of the master plan for a new facility, and developed a large-scale model of Chicago that made the CAF facility a destination.[3] His projects have focused on issues including fences and land use; water supply systems; lighting and city life; preservation; livable communities; energy efficiency; and skyscraper engineering and architecture.

Scholarship

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Dreicer's scholarly research and publications investigate ongoing processes of change, rather than landscapes and buildings as objects. His work, focused on the reinvention of construction, demonstrates the crucial role of building in the history of industrialization and nation-building. This transnational investigation of design in action demonstrates how the fundamental ideas that shape understandings of technology—nationalism and evolutionism—are entwined in the process of invention itself. In articles such as "Nouvelles inventions: l’interchangeabilité et le génie national" in Culture Technique[4] and "Influence and Intercultural Exchange: the Case of Engineering Schools and Civil Engineering Works in the Nineteenth Century" in History and Technology,[5] Dreicer explores invention as a process of exchange among individuals while emphasizing the thinking behind the history of building, landscape, and architecture. In articles such as "Building Myths: The ‘Evolution’ from Wood to Iron in the Construction of Bridges and Nations" in Perspecta,[6] Dreicer explores the myths and metaphors that still shape understandings of history and technology. In "Building Bridges and Boundaries: The Lattice and the Tube, 1820-1860" in Technology and Culture[7] he analyzes the relationship between the construction of engineering infrastructure and national identity.

Education and academic career

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Dreicer completed a PhD in Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University and a Masters in Historic Preservation at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Dreicer's post-doctoral academic positions include a Senior Fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution's Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation,[8] a Loeb Fellowship[9] at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers[10] at the New York Public Library. Dreicer has taught at the Parsons School of Design and MIT School of Architecture and Planning. He previously worked in New York City as an architectural conservator specializing in the restoration and repair of high-rise building facades.

Selected projects

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Dreicer has developed and curated more than 25 humanities-based exhibition projects.

Museum of Vancouver

  • Unbelievable (2017)
  • Your Future Home: Creating the New Vancouver (2016)
  • makesmehappy (2016)

Chicago Architecture Foundation

  • Loop Value: The How Much Does It Cost? Shop (2012–13)
  • Chicago Model City (2009–10)[11]
  • Green With Desire: Can We Live Sustainably in Our Homes? (2008)
  • Do We Dare Squander Chicago’s Great Architectural Heritage? Preserving Chicago, Making History (2008)
  • Chicago: You Are Here (2007–2012)

Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service - Museum on Main Street (national travel)

  • Between Fences (2005–2012)[12]
  • Barn Again! (1997–2005)[13]

American Society of Civil Engineers

  • Me, Myself and Infrastructure (New York Historical Society, National Building Museum, One Market [San Francisco], Turtle Bay Exploration Park, 2002–2003, Chicago Architecture Foundation, 2007)[14]

Museum of the City of New York[15]

  • Transformed by Light: The New York Night (2005)
  • New York Comes Back: Mayor Ed Koch and the City (2005)
  • Trade (2004)
  • Perform (2004)

Afikim Foundation (national travel)

  • When Humanity Fails (2006)[16]

New York Public Library Science, Industry and Business Library

  • I on Infrastructure (2002)[17]

National Building Museum

  • Between Fences (1996)
  • Barn Again! (1994)

Selected publications

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  • Me, Myself, and Infrastructure: Private Lives and Public Works in America (Washington, DC: ASCE, 2002) ISBN 0-7844-0611-1
  • "Standardization," "Maurice Koechlin," "Alfred Henry Neville," "Wilhelm Nordling," and "Ithiel Town." In Antoine Picon, ed., L’art de l’ingénieur: constructeur, entrepreneur, inventeur (Paris, France: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1997). ISBN 2-85850-911-5
  • "Wired! The Fence Industry and the Invention of Chain Link." In Gregory Dreicer, ed., Between Fences (Washington, D.C./New York: National Building Museum/Princeton Architectural Press, 1996). ISBN 1-56898-080-9
  • La Manufacture des Tabacs de Lyon: Historique, Analyse Architecturale, Reconversion. Report for Ministère de la Culture, Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles, Inventaire Général des Monuments et des Richesses Artistiques de la France, Région Rhone-Alpes, Lyon, France, August 1987.
  • "High-Rise Wall Construction 1880-1930." History of Tall Buildings (Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, Committee 29, Third International Conference on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, Chicago, Ill., January 1986), 119–199. ISBN 0-07-012532-5

Selected articles on Dreicer's work

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References

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  1. ^ "For example, Me, Myself and Infrastructure was included in the 2002 Washington Post top ten exhibition list; it was the only non-art exhibition on the list". Washington Post, Dec. 27, 2002. Archived from the original on July 14, 2012. Retrieved November 16, 2009.
  2. ^ "Museum on Main Street". Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved November 16, 2009.
  3. ^ "Alphine W. Jefferson, "Chicago Model City: A Permanent Exhibition," Public Historian 33 (May 2011): 167-71". {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
  4. ^ Gregory K. Dreicer. "Nouvelles inventions: l'interchangeabilité et le génie national". Culture Technique, 1992. Retrieved November 16, 2009.
  5. ^ Gregory K. Dreicer. "Influence and Intercultural Exchange: the Case of Engineering Schools and Civil Engineering Works in the Nineteenth Century". History and Technology, 1995. Retrieved November 16, 2009.
  6. ^ Gregory K. Dreicer. "Building Myths: The 'Evolution' from Wood to Iron in the Construction of Bridges and Nations". Perspecta, 2000. Archived from the original on June 4, 2011. Retrieved November 16, 2009.
  7. ^ Gregory K. Dreicer (2009). "Building Bridges and Boundaries: The Lattice and the Tube, 1820-1860". Technology and Culture. 51. Technology and Culture, January, 2010: 126–163. doi:10.1353/tech.0.0406. S2CID 110334486.
  8. ^ "Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation". Smithsonian Institution. Archived from the original on March 11, 2010. Retrieved November 16, 2009.
  9. ^ "Loeb Fellowship Class of 1998". Harvard University. Archived from the original on June 15, 2011. Retrieved November 16, 2009.
  10. ^ "Cullman Center Past Fellows". New York Public Library. Archived from the original on March 2, 2009. Retrieved November 16, 2009.
  11. ^ "Chicago Model City". Chicago Architecture Foundation. Retrieved November 30, 2009.
  12. ^ "Between Fences". Museum on Main Street. Archived from the original on December 2, 2009. Retrieved November 16, 2009.
  13. ^ "Barn Again". Museum on Main Street. Archived from the original on December 2, 2009. Retrieved November 16, 2009.
  14. ^ "Me, Myself and Infrastructure". American Society of Civil Engineers. Archived from the original on May 17, 2008. Retrieved November 30, 2009.
  15. ^ "Past Exhibitions". Museum of the City of New York. Archived from the original on July 13, 2009. Retrieved November 30, 2009.
  16. ^ "When Humanity Fails". The Afikim Foundation. Retrieved November 30, 2009.
  17. ^ I on Infrastructure. New York Public Library: Science, Industry and Business Library.
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