Steven Semes

It was with mixed results that Gabriel Brewer, of Robert A.M. Stern Architects, quoted Philip Johnson: "I am a whore and I am paid very well for high rise buildings," the line attributed to the late, great Johnson goes.

Brewer, whose firm has had its hand in projects commissioned by Disney, Rice University and Harvard, was speaking at a panel discussion at the Dahesh Museum of Art on Friday on the topic of architecture and patronage; Steven W. Semes, an architect in his own practice since 1999 and author of The Architecture of the Classical Interior, moderated.

The question, as Semes put it, was: “How do you cultivate a good patron?”

But it started to sound as though the question was really, “are today’s patrons cultivated enough to choose good architects?”  read more »

The “enlightened patron,” Brewer said, is one who chooses an architect other than Frank Gehry or Richard Meier, who are already marketing points in New York real estate.