Hilary Ballon

Hilary Ballon is Associate Vice Chancellor for New York University Abu Dhabi. An architectural historian, her work focuses on cities and the intersection of architecture, politics, and social life in two fields of research, 20th-century America and 17th-century Europe. Before joining NYU in September 2007, Ballon taught for more than 20 years at Columbia University, where she served as Director of Art Humanities and Chairman of the Department of Art History and Archaeology and received Columbia University’s highest teaching awards: the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching, the Great Teacher Award, and the Philip and Ruth Hettleman Teaching Award. Ballon serves on the Board of Directors of The Skyscraper Museum, the Museum of the City of New York, the Regional Plan Association, and the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. Ballon was chairman of the Planning Board of Englewood, New Jersey from 2000-05. She received a B.A. from Princeton University and Ph.D. from M.I.T. A prolific author and curator, Ballon’s most recent project was “Robert Moses and the Modern City” the three-venue exhibition that re-evaluated Moses’s physical transformation of 20th-century New York. Ballon was a principal author and co-editor of the accompanying book, Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York (with Kenneth T. Jackson, W.W. Norton, 2007). Her previous books include New York’s Pennsylvania Stations (W.W. Norton, 2002); Louis Le Vau: Mazarin’s College, Colbert’s Revenge (Princeton University Press, 1999), which won the Prix d’Academie from the Academie Francaise; and The Paris of Henri IV: Architecture and Urbanism (Architectural History Foundation/MIT Press, 1991), which won the Alice Davis Hitchcock Prize for the Most Distinguished Work in Architectural History. She has also curated “Gateway to Metropolis: New York’s Pennsylvania Stations” at the Wallach Art Gallery and “Frank Lloyd Wright: The Vertical Dimension at The Skyscraper Museum. Ballon is Editor of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (JSAH), the journal of record in the field.