Peter Clericuzio
Syracuse University (USA)
Weinberg Fellow in Architectural History and Preservation
Propelling Italy into a new century: Fiat, corporate identity, and Arte Nuova
2024–2025: Spring
Peter Clericuzio is an architectural historian based in the School of Architecture at Syracuse University, specializing in modern architecture primarily in Europe and North America between 1800 and 1970, with a particular interest in Francophone countries and the connections between architecture and the decorative arts, material culture, and urbanism. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, and has held visiting positions at the University of Edinburgh, University of Pittsburgh, University of Tennessee, and Florida International University. His articles and essays have appeared in such publications as the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, the Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, Architectural History, and Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide.
Peter is the author of Building a Regional Modernism: Art Nouveau Architecture in Nancy, 1898–1920, currently under contract with McGill-Queens University Press, and the co-author of Myth and Machine: Art and Aviation During the First World War (The Wolfsonian–FIU, 2014). He is currently completing a second monograph, A Sustainable Modernism? Le Corbusier and the French Reconstruction, 1945–52, for Lund Humphries. At The Wolfsonian–FIU, he curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions on modern architecture, design, graphic arts, and material culture, including Crisis and Commerce: World's Fairs of the 1930s (2013), The Theaters of S. Charles Lee (2013–14), and Visualizing the Information Age (2015). His work has been supported by a Fulbright Advanced Research Grant as well as grants from the Society of Architectural Historians Great Britain and the University of Edinburgh, among others.
At the Italian Academy, Peter's research will form the basis of a new monograph, tentatively titled Italian Modernism for a New Century: Fiat, Corporate Identity, and Arte Nuova, 1899–1924, which investigates the links between the nascent Italian auto industry at the dawn of the twentieth century and the Stile Liberty, or Arte Nuova, the Italian variant of the style called Art Nouveau, and their critical role, in conjunction with the staging of international expositions, in producing the first aesthetic language for Italian modernism, thus predating the more celebrated Futurist movement by at least a decade.