Seaside Pays Tribute to Vincent Scully with Massive Mural

The Town of Seaside and street artist Andrew Pisacane (aka Gaia) are paying tribute to historian and educator of art and architecture Vincent Scully with a wall-sized mural on Seaside’s purple wall facing Scenic 30A.

A dedication ceremony will be held in front of the mural on Fri., Feb. 23 at 3 p.m., during the Seaside Prize weekend, weather permitting.

Scully’s death last November was mourned by scholars, students and lovers of architecture throughout the world. Scully taught architectural history for more than 50 years at Yale University and for nearly 20 years at the University of Miami. He also authored more than 20 books. His undergraduate lectures at Yale were always standing-room-only, as he was known as the most dramatic, impassioned and erudite teacher at the university.

Scully was one of Seaside’s early supporters and influenced many who contributed their design, planning and architecture talents to Seaside, several of them were his students at Yale, and many more who read his books or attended his lectures in Seaside.

Scully was revered for being able to explain the innate relationship between architectural style, urbanism and the environment to the mainstream. He inspired future architects with the idea of reconnecting contemporary architecture with its past, thereby planting seeds that grew into the New Urbanism movement.

He taught some of the prominent architects who built in Seaside such as Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Alexander Gorlin, Robert Orr, Ernesto Buch and Robert Stern. Duany and Plater-Zyberk established the DPZ architecture firm and led Seaside’s “Night Crew,” a group of early Seaside designers. In later years, Scully acknowledged Seaside’s impact.

“Robert and DPZ put together a kind of way that people seem to want to live, especially people who can afford it,” said Scully. “They’ve turned it around. It’s changed the whole coast.”

“Gaia,” known for his murals about people and neighborhoods, pays artistic tribute to Scully with a mural that depicts a thoughtful portrait of Scully and a background image of the Acropolis from the cover of Scully’s influential book, The Earth, the Temple, and the Gods: Greek Sacred Architecture.

“The project offers Seaside visitors a cultural and historical experience through the eyes of mural artist Gaia, and portrays the importance and impact Scully had on the town of Seaside,” said Seaside co-founder Robert Davis.  

Plater-Zyberk, Dean Emeritus of the University of Miami’s School of Architecture and a Scully student, will lead a tribute to Scully on Sat., Feb. 24, at 6 p.m., on the lawn in front of the mural, weather permitting.

More about Vincent Scully, 1920-2017
Vincent J. Scully Jr. was born in New Haven and attended Hillhouse High School, on the site of what would later become Morse College, where he served as master from 1969 to 1975, and died and died in November 2017 at age 97. For a half a century, Scully has taught hundreds of students in packed lecture halls at Yale. He published many articles and more than a dozen books which span a wide spectrum of subject matter, and was one of the University’s most recognized scholars.

Observing early in his teaching career that urban development during the 1950s tended to destroy neighborhoods by the imposition of freeways and superblocks, Scully argued fervently that the principles of modernism are incompatible with communal values. Several of his students have become important American architects, and his influence is now present in the design of many urban and suburban sites throughout the nation.

Among Scully’s most well-known works are The Shingle Style: Architectural Theory and Design from Richardson to the Origins of Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright, The Earth, the Temple, and the Gods: Greek Sacred Architecture, Louis I. Kahn, Pueblo: Mountain, Village, Dance, The Villas of Palladio and Architecture: the Natural and the Manmade.

More About Gaia
Gaia grew up in New York City and is a 2011 graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art with a Bachelor in Fine Arts. His studio work, installations and gallery projects have been exhibited throughout the world most notably The Baltimore Museum of Art, Rice Gallery in Houston and Palazzo Collicola Arti Visive in Spoleto and the Civil and Human Rights Museum in Atlanta. His street work has been documented and featured in several books on urban art, including Beyond the Street: The 100 Leading Figures in Urban Art, (Berlin, 2010) and Outdoor Gallery (New York, 2014). Gaia was listed as a 2015 Forbes 30 Under 30 in Art and Style recipient in Art and Style and was a Fullbright beneficiary to study and paint in New Delhi on behalf of the State Dept. Gaia lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland, but spends a majority of his time painting murals across the world and has produced works in all six habitable continents.

The Seaside Prize
Presented by the Seaside Institute and Seaside Merchants and sponsored by GE and Sunburst Beach Vacations, the Seaside Prize event will be held Feb. 22-25 at the Seaside Assembly Hall. Each year, the Seaside Institute awards the Seaside Prize to individuals or organizations that have made significant contributions to the quality and character of communities. The recipients of the Prize have a major influence on how our towns and cities can best be built and re-built to reflect and promote walkability, diversity, beauty and sustainability. Seaside Prize fellows are leaders of urban design, planning, architecture, development and education. For more information on the Prize winners and a list of past recipients, visit www.seasideinstitute.org/2018-seaside-prize.

The Seaside Prize weekend package for members is $350 ($400 non-members) and includes lectures, walking tours, Prize ceremony, meals and more. Individual days and events can be purchased at various prices. Additionally, Seaside Prize recipient James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere, will deliver a Keynote Lecture Thurs., Feb. 22, at 6 p.m. For those who want to join in the weekend activities, visit www.seasideinstitute.org/new-events/2016/10/17/seaside-prize.