Quite possibly the best thing to happen to midcentury modernism since sliding glass doors, George Smart is the founder and executive director of USModernist, a nonprofit educational archive dedicated to the documentation, preservation, and promotion of modernist residential design. Since 2007, Smart and his nonprofit staff and network of volunteers have documented over 15,000 modernist houses across the country, while the USModernist Library has scanned over 4 million pages of architecture magazines.
A resident of Durham, North Carolina, Smart makes a pilgrimage to Palm Springs every February for Modernism Week, spending his mornings poolside at the quintessential midcentury Skylark Hotel conducting interviews for his long-running USModernist Radio podcast. Guests scheduled to stop by for a chat this week include architects Thom Mayne and Leo Marmol, and architecture critics Alan Hess and Blair Kamin. The rest of Smart’s day includes attending as many tours, lectures, and parties as time permits.
With only so many hours in a day and over 350 offerings on the festival’s jam-packed schedule, figuring out which ones to attend can be quite a challenge. Rising to that challenge, Smart shared five picks from this year’s line-up that, as far as he’s concerned, are not to be missed.
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Image Credit: Palm Springs Art Museum “The Frey II is a magnificent jewel-box of a house, only 800 square feet, perched above the Palm Springs Art Museum, which owns it. It’s a splendid opportunity to see how small, meticulous design can be available to everybody, as well as an example of Frey’s masterwork.”
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Image Credit: Modernism Week Frank Sinatra Twin Palms Estate Tour
“I’m really looking forward to the tour of Frank Sinatra’s estate in Twin Palms, by E. Stewart Williams. One of its bathroom sinks still has a crack from a champagne bottle Ava Gardner threw during a fight with Frank.”
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Image Credit: Palm Springs Modernism Week “I still haven’t gotten around to seeing ‘Don’t Worry Darling,’ but I put this event on my shortlist because Canyon View Estates, where a lot of it was filmed, is one of my favorite neighborhoods in Palm Springs.”
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Image Credit: Palm Springs Modernism Week Opening Weekend Hosted by Charles Phoenix at the Azure Sky Hotel
“Supermarket Superstars” Slideshow, Annenberg Theater at the Palm Springs Art Museum“Whether it’s a bus tour or a retro slideshow, Charles Phoenix’s events are always a lot of fun. He’s just hilarious.”
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Image Credit: Modernism Week Exploring the Kirk and Anne Douglas Estate
“The Kirk and Anne Douglas estate in Old Las Palmas is where USModernist is holding its biggest fundraising event of the year. It was designed by Donald Wexler in 1954, and its current owners, Michael Budman and Diane Bald, who’s an architect, have done a meticulous restoration.”