Slade Lectures 2026: Urban Change and Representation

Nineteenth-Century Paris: Memories and Counter-Memories

Esther da Costa Meyer

5pm Wednesday 21 January

Auditorium, St John's College, University of Oxford

(Free Admission)

The radical urban transformation of Paris under Napoleon III left a swath of destruction to make way for new boulevards and upscale buildings. Demolitions also uncovered archaeological ruins and other disquieting finds that challenged the city’s views of itself and of its history.

Esther da Costa Meyer, Professor emerita in the Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, was the Vincent Scully Visiting Professor of Architectural History, Yale School of Architecture (2019) and the Kirk Varnedoe Visiting Professor at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts (2024). Her book Dividing Paris: Urban Renewal and Social Inequality, 1852-1870 (Princeton University Press, 2022) grew out of work on the architectural practices of the old colonial powers and their pervasive impact on historiography. Da Costa Meyer’s curatorial work includes Frank Gehry: On Line, at the Princeton University Art Museum (2008), and at the Jewish Museum in New York, Pierre Chareau: Modern Architecture and Design (2016) and The Sassoons (co-curated, 2023). In recent years, her research has also focused on architecture’s complicity with climate change and the architecture of refugee camps around the world.