On Wednesday, April 26, 2023, Therese Poletti spoke at the Jewish Museum of Florida for the 16th World Congress on Art Deco lecture series.
In her lecture, Poletti discusses her work in the preservation of Art Deco-era movie theaters in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The bay area currently has about 12 active movie theaters, including the Paramount, the Alameda, the California, the El Rey, the Castro, and the Grand Lake.
Therese Poletti is currently the Preservation Director of the Art Deco Society of California. She is also an award-winning journalist and author of a biography/monograph of architect Timothy Pflueger, one of the most revered architects in the San Francisco Bay Area who worked frequently in the Art Deco style.
She also leads walking tours for San Francisco City Guides, another Bay Area non-profit, where she is also the tour coordinator for the Downtown Deco walking tour. She has given lectures at two previous Art Deco World Congresses: Shanghai and Argentina, and has lectured frequently in the SF Bay Area on Pflueger and other Art Deco topics.
As preservation director of the Art Deco Society of California since 2015, Poletti has been directly involved in many preservation issues and battles over the last eight years.
She wrote the landmark application for the California Theatre in Berkeley with assistance from Berkeley Architectural Heritage, worked with community groups on the Castro Theatre and El Rey, wrote grant applications for funding from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and San Francisco Heritage, and has represented the ADSC at many preservation hearings in the SF Bay Area.
She is also a columnist at MarketWatch, part of the Dow Jones digital network, where she writes about the machinations, financial and social impact of the technology industry.
The 16th World Congress on Art Deco was made possible with the support of the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, the City of Miami Beach, Miami-Dade County, the State of Florida, the International Coalition of Art Deco Societies, and the Art Deco Society of the Palm Beaches.
