MINNEAPOLIS, July 29, 2025—Jane King Hession is the recipient of a 2025 AIA Minnesota Collaborative Achievement Award. The Collaborative Achievement Awards recognize individuals and organizations for exceptional contributions to the American Institute of Architects, the architectural profession, or the quality of the built environment.

Hession is a Minneapolis-based architectural writer, researcher, and historian specializing in midcentury modernism. In her writing, she strives to understand architecture within the contexts of the lives and times of its creators.

Hession’s latest book, Elizabeth Scheu Close: A Life in Modern Architecture (2020), received a 2024 Modernism in America Award of Excellence from Docomomo US. She is also the author of John H. Howe, Architect (2016, with Tim Quigley), The Frank Lloyd Wright House in Ebsworth Park (2015), Frank Lloyd Wright in New York: The Plaza Years, 1954–1959 (2007, with Debra Pickrel), and Ralph Rapson: Sixty Years of Modern Design (1999, with Rip Rapson and Bruce N. Wright). Hession curated attendant exhibits on these topics at the Goldstein Museum of Design (2015), the Northwest Architectural Archives (2015), the University of Minnesota College of Design (2014), the Minneapolis Institute of Art (2002), and the Weisman Art Museum (1999).

“What came across in the nomination is the amount of research that has gone into her writing and curatorial work and how accessible she’s made these histories for a wider audience,” said one of the Collaborative Achievement Awards jurors. “She is a gifted storyteller.”

This past winter and spring, Hession collaborated with Kimberly Long Loken, AIA, associate professor in the School of Art & Design at the University of Wisconsin–Stout, and Cheryll Fong, curator of the Northwest Architectural Archives, to present “Making Room: Women’s Histories from the Northwest Architectural Archives” at the University of Minnesota’s Elmer L. Andersen Library. The exhibition shone a light on the talented and determined women who made room for themselves in a field once reserved exclusively for men.

“The contributions of many Minnesotans to the built environment are better known because of Jane King Hession,” wrote Kimberly Long Loken in her letter nominating Hession for the award. “The contributions of many women to the built environment have been further examined and celebrated because of Jane King Hession. The community in and around AIA Minnesota is all the richer for it.”

Serving on the 2025 Collaborative Achievement Awards jury were AIA Minnesota member leaders Eric Amel, FAIA, Nicole Bauknight, Assoc. AIA, NOMA, Doug Bergert, AIA, Monica Hartberg, AIA, and Ananth Shankar, AIA Emeritus, NOMA.

Hession will be honored at an AIA Minnesota Awards Celebration on August 19, 2025, at the Room & Board showroom in Edina. Learn more about the Collaborative Achievement Awards here.

The American Institute of Architects Minnesota, founded in 1892, is dedicated to strengthening our communities, improving our built environment, and providing exceptional design. For more information on the organization and Minnesota architectural firms, visit our website and subscribe to ENTER, our digital monthly newsletter that explores the people and ideas shaping a better built environment for Minnesota.