Sibyl Moholy-Nagy

Sibyl Moholy-Nagy (born Dorothea Maria Pauline Alice Sybille Pietzsch; October 29, 1903 – January 8, 1971) was an architectural and art historian. She is known for shifting architectural attention away from iconic modernist buildings towards vernacular structures, urban history, and the lived experiences of building inhabitants. She was one of the first three internal critics (Alongside Jane Jacobs, Ada Louise Huxtable, etc.) who kept the U.S. architectural establishment continually on the run during the 50s and 60s") of what she regarded as the excesses of postwar modernist architecture, arguing that it had lost connection to historical precedent, urban continuity, and human experience. Moholy-Nagy was the first female full-time professor at the Pratt Institute in New York City. Recognized as “the pillar on which Pratt Institute was built” for her significant contributions to curriculum development and her student-acclaimed teaching style. Originally a German citizen, she accompanied her second husband, the Hungarian Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy, in his move to the United States. She was the author of several books on architectural history including Matrix of Man, Native Genius in Anonymous Architecture, and Moholy-Nagy: Experiment in Totality, of a study of her late husband’s work.