Donald Albrecht is the Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of the City of New York. Mr. Albrecht has curated exhibitions that have ranged from overviews of cultural trends to profiles of individual design firms and artists. His catalogs have garnered numerous awards, including the Society of Architectural Historians’ Best Exhibition Catalogue. Mr. Albrecht has also contributed essays to a number of books about architecture and design, including The Glass House: Pairings and California Design: The Legacy of West Coast Craft and Style, and has written extensively about the relationship between architecture and film, starting with his seminal book, Designing Dreams: Modern Architecture in the Movies.

Thomas Mellins
is an independent curator and author, and has curated exhibitions for the National Building Museum, the Yale School of Architecture, and many others. His most recent exhibition, “The American Style: New York and the Modern Metropolis,” at the Museum of the City of New York, was co-curated with Donald Albrecht. Mr. Mellins has also published several books on the architectural history of New York, beginning with New York 1930: Architecture and Urbanism Between the Two World Wars, and has contributed essays to a number of publications focusing on architecture and design.
Internationally known for her wealth and style, American heiress and philanthropist Doris Duke surprisingly amassed one of the nation’s largest private collections of Islamic art. Perhaps equally surprising is the environment within which Duke placed her extensive collection. Developed over the course of more than fifty years beginning in 1936, Shangri La, aptly named by Duke, seamlessly melds modern architecture, tropical landscape, and art from throughout the Muslim world, into a unique vision of home. Shangri La will be the subject of a traveling exhibition and related book starting in the fall of 2012, organized by Mr. Albrecht and Mr. Mellins.

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