Gregory Dreicer


Gregory Dreicer is an American curatorial strategist, historian, experience designer, exhibition developer, and museum manager. Dreicer's multidisciplinary projects, which engage audiences in discovering and exploring everyday environments, have led public discussion on issues including infrastructure, landscape, architecture, city planning, community identity, preservation, design, and sustainability. Dreicer's work is known for innovative strategies in project conception and design that create memorable experiences.

Public history and museums

Dreicer's projects, through a transdisciplinary focus on story, identity, and place, emphasize the indivisible nature of natural, designed, and social environments. Embedding inclusivity, questioning myths, and exploring multiple perspectives characterize pathbreaking projects aimed at engaging broad audiences. Dreicer has developed exhibitions and programs for organizations including the Vancouver Public Library, Museum of Vancouver, National Building Museum, Museum of the City of New York, and the Smithsonian Institution Museum on Main Street program. Dreicer's projects have featured communities including Black Americans, Latinx, Indigenous peoples, and Jews. At the Museum of Vancouver, Dreicer developed an institutional vision based on social connection. At the Chicago Architecture Foundation, Dreicer developed the institutional thematic framework, was responsible for the creation of the master plan for a new facility, and developed a large-scale model of Chicago that made the CAF facility a destination. His projects have focused on issues including fences and land use; water supply systems; lighting and city life; preservation; livable communities; energy efficiency; and skyscraper engineering and architecture.

Scholarship

Dreicer's scholarly research and publications investigate ongoing processes of change, rather than landscapes and buildings as static objects. His work, focused on the reinvention of construction, demonstrates the fundamental role of building in industrialization and nation-building. This transnational investigation of design in action demonstrates how evolutionism and nationalism, which have shaped common understandings of technology, are entwined in the process of invention itself. In articles such as "Nouvelles inventions: l’interchangeabilité et le génie national" in Culture Technique and "Influence and Intercultural Exchange: the Case of Engineering Schools and Civil Engineering Works in the Nineteenth Century" in History and Technology, Dreicer explores invention as a process of exchange among individuals while emphasizing the thinking behind the history of building, landscape, and architecture. In articles such as "Building Myths: The ‘Evolution’ from Wood to Iron in the Construction of Bridges and Nations" in Perspecta, Dreicer explores the myths and metaphors that still form understandings of history and technology. In "Building Bridges and Boundaries: The Lattice and the Tube, 1820-1860" in Technology and Culture he analyzes the relationship between the construction of engineering infrastructure and national identity.

Education and academic career

Dreicer completed a PhD in at Cornell University and a Masters in Historic Preservation at the . Dreicer's post-doctoral academic positions include a Senior Fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution's, a Loeb Fellowship at the, and a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Dreicer has taught at the and . He previously worked in New York City as an architectural conservator specializing in the restoration and repair of high-rise building facades.

Selected projects

Dreicer has developed several institutional visitor plans and curated more than 25 humanities-based exhibition projects.

Museum of Vancouver
  • Unbelievable
  • Your Future Home: Creating the New Vancouver
  • makesmehappy
Chicago Architecture Foundation
  • Loop Value: The How Much Does It Cost? Shop
  • Chicago Model City
  • Green With Desire: Can We Live Sustainably in Our Homes?
  • Do We Dare Squander Chicago’s Great Architectural Heritage? Preserving Chicago, Making History
  • Chicago: You Are Here
Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service - Museum on Main Street
  • Between Fences
  • Barn Again!
American Society of Civil Engineers
  • Me, Myself and Infrastructure
Museum of the City of New York
  • Transformed by Light: The New York Night
  • New York Comes Back: Mayor Ed Koch and the City
  • Trade
  • Perform
Afikim Foundation
  • When Humanity Fails
New York Public Library Science, Industry and Business Library
  • I on Infrastructure
National Building Museum
  • Between Fences
  • ''Barn Again!''

Selected publications

  • Me, Myself, and Infrastructure: Private Lives and Public Works in America
  • "Standardization," "Maurice Koechlin," "Alfred Henry Neville," "Wilhelm Nordling," and "Ithiel Town." In Antoine Picon, ed., L’art de l’ingénieur: constructeur, entrepreneur, inventeur.
  • "Wired! The Fence Industry and the Invention of Chain Link." In Gregory Dreicer, ed., Between Fences.
  • La Manufacture des Tabacs de Lyon: Historique, Analyse Architecturale, Reconversion. Report for Ministère de la Culture, Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles, Inventaire Général des Monuments et des Richesses Artistiques de la France, Région Rhone-Alpes, Lyon, France, August 1987.
  • "High-Rise Wall Construction 1880-1930." History of Tall Buildings, 119–199.

Selected articles on Dreicer's work

  • Hank Burchard. "." Washington Post,.
  • Gayle Worland. "." Springfield Illinois Times,.
  • David Montgomery. "." Washington Post,.
  • Benjamin Forgey. "." Washington Post,.
  • Cathy Lynn Grossman. "." USA Today,.
  • Hank Burchard. "." Washington Post,.
  • Benjamin Forgey. "." Washington Post,.
  • Patricia Leigh Brown, "." New York Times,.
  • Lynda Richardson. "." New York Times,.
  • Michael O’Sullivan. "." Washington Post,.
  • Jeffery K. Stine. "." Technology and Culture, 4 : 778–85.
  • Peter Stegner. "." Bauwelt.
  • Lisa L. Colangelo. "," Daily News.
  • Fred Siegel. "The Mayor Who Brought the City Back from the Brink." New York Sun.
  • Steven Lubar. "" at the Museum of the City of New York. Museumblog, September 3, 2006.
  • , WNET, SundayArts News, June 15, 2008.
  • Kevin Nance. ".’" Chicago Sun-Times..
  • Bill Cunniff. "." Chicago Sun-Times.
  • William Mullen. "." Chicago Tribune.
  • Cheryl Rossi, Vancouver Courier.Vancouver Sun.
  • Robert Mangelsdorf, Vancouver Courier.
  • Jan Zeschky, Vancouver Courier.
  • Tara Lee, Inside Vancouver.
  • Laura Jones, The Ubyssey.