Generations of Yale students share stories about special moments in Vincent Scully's courses on art and architecture. Scully's wide-ranging knowledge counted, but it was the presentation that made the difference. Scully was a charismatic figure on the stage; his focus and passion made him a memorable classroom and public lecturer. No doubt it was the drama that prompted Time magazine to name him one of the ten "Great Teachers" in the United States in 1966. The first story I heard--now long ago--about Scully came from a political science major who was in one of Scully's classes in the mid-1960s. He described how in one lecture Scully spontaneously responded to the image projected on the screen, seeing something new in what was to him a familiar image. As Scully described his new insight, he became so absorbed in his dialogue with the image and with the class that he stepped back to the edge of the stage and fell off. But he did not stop talking. He finished his point and then resumed the lecture back on the stage. Was it true? My friend insisted it was. Is it important that my friend did not tell me the work of art at issue? Perhaps. Is it relevant that my friend acquired from Scully a life-long interest in architecture? Of course.

His lectures were rhetorical, emotive and connotative. He did not marshal evidence in the usual academic way; he inclined toward an intuitive and declarative style, and it was often difficult to grasp the evidential links in the transit from projected image to the meaning he proposed. But if some students were not quite sure how it was done, they came away with an expansive and humanistic appreciation of architecture.

Undergraduates were not, however, Scully's only audience at Yale. A large number of the architecture students who came in contact with him found inspiration and guidance into the central issues of modern architecture theory and practice. Among them were some of the most important architects practicing today, including Robert A.M. Stern, the current dean of architecture at Yale, to say nothing of the considerable number of architecture writers spawned in his classes. This collection of Scully's essays invites a larger audience into that extended conversation.

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