The Cathedrals of France with R. Howard Bloch

A conversation between R. Howard Bloch and Barry Bergdoll at the American Library in Paris. Filmed on 14/06/2023 with a live audience both in person and on Zoom. From their first foundations to the present day, celebrated art historian R. Howard Bloch takes us inside six of France’s most magnificent cathedrals. Saint-Denis, Chartres, Sainte-Chapelle, Reims, Amiens and Notre-Dame: in Paris and her Cathedrals, art historian R. Howard Bloch approaches each of these celebrated sites with renewed curiosity, historical rigor, and aesthetic enthusiasm. From thrilling historical intrigues to luxurious architecture and sacred relics, Bloch reanimates the past of the cathedrals, revealing their centrality to French life and identity across epochs. Join Bloch in conversation with architecture expert Barry Bergdoll at the Library as they walk us through the vaulted arches and stone passages of France’s most iconic structures, showing glimpses along the way into ways of life lost to time. About the speaker: R. Howard Bloch is the Sterling Professor of French and Humanities at Yale University. He is the author of numerous award-winning books on French literature and art. Currently a fellow at the Institute for Ideas & Imagination, Barry Bergdoll is Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History at Columbia University. A specialist in the history of modern architecture, he served from 2007 to 2014 as Chief Curator of Architecture & Design at the New York Museum of Modern Art. He has also organized exhibitions at the Musée d’Orsay, the Caisse des Monuments Historiques and the Centre Canadien d’Architecture. He is the author of European Architecture: 1750-1890 in the Oxford History of Art series and monographs on Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Mies van der Rohe, Léon Vaudoyer, and (as editor) Marcel Breuer: Building Global Institutions. Evenings with an Author is generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg.