Kevin Nance

Kevin Nance

Kevin Nance, Director of Public Affairs, helps coordinate AS+GG's public and media relations. He writes about the firm and its work for internal and external communications.

Kevin joined AS+GG in 2008 after a 23-year career in newspapers as a reporter, columnist, editor and critic, most recently at the Chicago Sun-Times, where he was the art and architecture critic. Kevin's Sun-Times profile of Adrian Smith, "Man of Steel," is included in The Architecture of Adrian Smith, SOM: Toward a Sustainable Future. His profile of architect Frank Gehry was a finalist for a 2004 Peter Lisagor Award.

As an individual journalist, Kevin won several national honors, including the Darrell Sifford Memorial Prize and a first-place award in feature writing from the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors. As a contributor to team projects, Kevin won the National Headliner Award for Public Service, a Green Eyeshade Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

In addition to his newspaper work, Kevin has published articles and reviews in magazines, including Art in America, ARTnews, Art + Auction, Artnet, Interiors, Booklist, Obit, and Poets & Writers, where he is a contributing editor. He's also a published poet, with work in literary journals such as The North American Review and Cumberland Poetry Review, which awarded him the 2003 Robert Penn Warren Poetry Prize.

Education

USC/Annenberg Getty Arts Journalism Program fellow, 2006
National Critics Institute fellow, 2000
Wesleyan Writers Conference fellow, 1992
Bachelor of Arts in English, Duke University, 1983

Awards + Honors

Chicago Journalists Association first-place award, 2006
American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors (first place, Arts & Entertainment feature), 2003
First-place feature-writing award from Gannett, 2002
The Pulitzer Prize for Public Service (team coverage), 1997
Darrell Sifford Prize in Journalism (first place, national feature-writing contest), 1997
SPJ Green Eyeshade Award (team investigative series), 1996
National Headliner Award for Public Service (team investigative series), 1992
Kentucky Press Association, four consecutive first-place feature-writing awards, 1988-92

Presentations + Publications

Articles and reviews in Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Miami Herald, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Art in America, ARTnews, Art + Auction, Artnet Magazine, Glass Art, Interiors, Obit Magazine, Booklist, Variety, Poets & Writers, American Theatre, Stage Directions, Appalachian Heritage, Louisville Magazine, The Army Times

Kevin Nance on...

…design
I admire the rigor and clean lines of Modernism, but I'm also excited by the curvilinear and the sculptural in much of today's architecture. Some see that kind of design as gimmicky or show-offish, and certainly it can be, if form and function are divorced. But in the proper context, why shouldn't architecture—including, and maybe especially, sustainable architecture—be as expressive, poetic and evocative as the best abstract sculpture? Green buildings don't have to be ugly!

…where he finds inspiration
My inspirations as a writer are legion. They include poets (Whitman, Lowell, Charles Wright), novelists (Dickens, Forster, Welty), playwrights (Shakespeare, Williams, Albee) and architecture writers (Mumford, Muschamp, Levine). I'm also inspired by everyday speech, and try to incorporate its natural rhythms into written language.

…his favorite "moment" in architecture
The career of Louis Sullivan. As much any other architect, and far more than most, Sullivan bridged the gaps between form and function, decoration and utility, art and architecture.

…his favorite city architecturally
Chicago, mainly because it has the highest concentration (which is, admittedly, not very high) of extant buildings by Sullivan. It doesn't hurt that the metro area also has quite a few examples of work by Sullivan's most famous pupil, Frank Lloyd Wright.

...what he'd be if he weren't in his current position
A best-selling novelist, or perhaps the author of a nonfiction book (also best-selling, naturally) along the lines of The Devil in the White City.

...what he does when he's not writing
Reading, relaxing in front of the tube, going to movies and plays, traveling, cooking, dining and relaxing with my family and friends.