Talk:Galen Schlosser

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Verification problems

Latest comment: 13 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

This article has several verification problems.

1. It says the University of Pennsylvania called upon Galen Schlosser "to organize the Kahn Archives there after Louis Kahn's death". However, Brownlee's and De Long's authoritative book Louis Kahn: In the Realm of Architecture says on page 421 that the Kahn archives were organized by Luis Vincent Rivera and G. Holmes Perkins with the assistance of many other people, one of whom was Galen Schlosser.

2. The article says that Schlosser was the supervising architect for three of Louis Kahn's works: the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, the Kimbell Art Museum and the Esherick House. Schlosser is mentioned in some of scholarly books as being an architect on Kahn's team but I cannot find any mention of Schlosser as a supervising architect. It is possible that Schlosser was indeed the supervising architect for these projects but that the role is not considered to be sufficiently important to be mentioned in scholarly studies. As I understand it, the supervising architect is the architect's representative on the construction site who ensures that the contractor follows the architect's specifications and who makes on-the-spot decisions about building issues that arise. The Kahn archives at the University of Pennsylvania, which lists the main contributors (landscape architect, structural engineer, etc) to Kahn's projects, does not list the supervising architect for any of them and does not mention Schlosser in any capacity at all.

3. Contrary to this article, the Wikipedia article on the Salk Institute for Biological Studies says that Michael Duff, not Galen Schlosser, was Kahn's supervising architect on that project. Frustratingly, that statement does not have citations either and is not supported by any of the standard reference books on Kahn. I will fix that situation also after I have time to do more research on it.

The fundamental problem with the supervising architect information here is not only that it is unverified but, if I have done my research properly, it cannot be verified according to Wikipedia's standards. The information simply doesn't exist in any reputable source as far as I can determine.

Because the title of supervising architect is easily misunderstood, it is important either to properly reference that information or omit it altogether. To many people it apparently sounds something like "chief architect." It is worth noting that the death notice for Schlosser in the Lancaster, PA newspaper makes the bizarre claim that "he designed the Jonas Salk Research Center", which is one of Kahn's masterpieces.

I propose to rewrite the Schlosser article and include only verifiable facts in it. The draft is temporarily in my sandbox. If someone can come up with verifiable evidence to support the information in the current article, that would be great. Otherwise, after a waiting period, and if no one objects, I will replace the existing article. The statements in the current article might be true, but "the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth," according to Wikipedia:Verifiability. The information in the current article has been copied to several other places on the web, which clearly cannot be used as sources of verification. Bilpen (talk) 17:24, 29 January 2011 (UTC)Reply

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