Harf Zimmermann"Glass House," 1949, by Philip Johnson, located in New Canaan, Conn.
Along with the news that Punxsutawney Phil didn't see his shadow, here's another harbinger of spring: At 9 a.m. on Feb. 15, tickets for the 2011 tours of the Philip Johnson Glass House in New Canaan, Conn., will go on sale. To mark the program's fifth year, the Glass House (a National Trust for Historic Preservation site) is adding several new tours to its already varied menu. (The tour season runs from May through November.) Three new two-hour, $45 tours will focus on specific aspects of the 47-acre site: the architecture; the art (Johnson and his partner, David Whitney, assembled a significant collection of postwar and contemporary painting and sculpture); and the landscape, which includes everything from historic trees to Whitney's idiosyncratic succulent gardens.
Also on offer is Third Thursdays, a program that features a $150 curated tour (followed by a reception) with prominent figures in the fields of architecture and design, art, history, landscape and preservation, including the critic Paul Goldberger, the architect Charles Renfro of Diller Scofidio & Renfro, and Theodore H. M. Prudon, who founded the Modernist preservation group Docomomo U.S. Tickets tend to sell out quickly; don't say you weren't warned.
