A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.
Selfie of John Smagner, an adult person with a fair skin tone, brimmed hat and glasses, holding a camera with the lens obscuring his face.

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John P Smagner

Lecturer

Contact

Bio

Lecturer of Art History, Theory, and Criticism (2025). BS, 1996, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania; AM, 1998, University of Chicago; PhD, 2003, University of Kansas; MS, 2020, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 

Publications

Review: Louis Sullivan’s Idea and Reconstructing the Garrick: Adler & Sullivan’s Lost Masterpiece. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, June 2023.

 

Personal Statement

Prior to a career in architectural history, Dr. John Smagner (he/him) was a successful developmental psychologist and entrepreneur. With a passion for architecture and photography, he turned to graduate school in architectural history and preservation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2018. Part of his training included an internship with the New York Landmarks Conservancy in New York City. He received additional training in architectural photography at the Chicago Photography School. His husband’s sabbatical during the 2022–23 academic school year allowed them the opportunity to travel to 25 countries to see the monuments John had learned about in class. They traveled throughout Europe, North Africa, and West Asia, visiting and photographing architectural monuments from prehistory to present day. Highlights included the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, Israel; the Maison Carree in Nimes, France; the Abu Simbel Temples in Egypt; the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey; the Koutoubiya Mosque in Marrakesh, Morocco; and the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna, Italy. They have since traveled to South Africa, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe. John turns to these photographs and experiences when teaching and sharing his knowledge and passion for architecture. He is happiest when traveling the world with his camera, tripod, and lenses so that he can explore architectural masterpieces from new angles and perspectives. John's professional interests include 19th and early 20th century ecclesiastical and residential architecture, particularly the work of American architect Ralph Adams Cram. He recently wrote the successful National Register of Historic Places nomination for First Presbyterian Church, that Cram designed in 1927 in Jamestown, NY, where he was born. John has photographed 60 buildings located in the United States, France, and Canada that were designed by Cram.

Portfolio

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This course surveys the history of architecture and design, including furnishings, decorative arts and interiors, from the earliest settlements of the Neolithic Era until the onset of Neoclassicism in the late Eighteenth Century. Special attention is given to the developments that have remained most influential within the architecture and design of today, with particular emphasis on ancient Greece and Rome, Early Christian, Byzantine and early Islam, the European Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo cultures. 

Through extensive lectures and readings, special focus in this class is devoted to the art of the Greek temple, Roman civil engineering, the rise of monasticism in the early Middle Ages, early Byzantine and early Islamic religious design, pilgrimage and Romanesque church building, Gothic Europe and the age of cathedrals, Italian Renaissance architecture and the rise of Humanism, Baroque churches and papal patronage, French chateaux and absolute monarchy, and the origins of Modernism during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment.

Students will complete a combination of in-class and take-home exams along with a final research paper on a topic chosen in consultation with the instructor.

Class Number

1051

Credits

3