Queer Designs and Cold War Homophobia: Lessons from the Life of Bruce Goff

You will not find much about Bruce Goff in histories of architecture or design. At most, he was called “eccentric”, a characterization he shared with Frank Lloyd Wright, who also experienced his share of marginalization. Practicing after World War II, Goff, like Wright, created architecture and interiors in the American Midwest, many for the middle class, which still stand as inventive examples of design. 

He was also an enormously successful Director of the School of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma, where he was a beloved teacher. Rather than encouraging students to imitate the forms he created, he cultivated in them the sense of design freedom and individuality that was at the core of his work.

In her lecture, Professor Carol Mason will extend Goff’s association with freedom and individual expression from his designs to his personal and professional life. Specifically, she will discuss his resignation as Director of the School as the consequence of an entanglement of his homosexuality with the political fears that cast a shadow over the U.S. during the Cold War.