FUNERAL SERVICES AND MEMORIALS
CONRAD SKINNER MARCH 20, 1951 - MARCH 2, 2023
Santa Fe — The incredible Conrad Churchill Skinner departed this world, leaving heartbroken family and friends on March 2 in Denver after a short and sudden illness. On his sickbed, his beloved teacher Roshi David Daishin Brighton said to him the profound words, “We died before we were born.”
As a Soto/Rinzai Buddhist of the White Plum Asanga, Conrad took Jukai in December 2022, receiving the name “Uji,” meaning Being/Time, from Daishin Roshi.
Conrad’s delight, curiosity and dedication in Buddhist practice mirrored the delight, curiosity and dedication he showed on his vocation and avocations.
Conrad was the eldest of four sons born to A. Homer Skinner, Jr. and Judith Churchill Skinner. He grew up in McLean, Va. And attended Potomac School and Choate Rosemary Hall boarding school, where he excelled at soccer and visual arts.
Conrad spent five decades as a visionary and working architect, receiving his B.A. in art and art history from Reed College and his Master’s in Architecture from the University of New Mexico. Conrad’s buildings, both built and envisioned, demonstrated his commitment to designing architecture for the human body. His connection with contemporary art, sculpture and dance spanned his lifetime.
Conrad was profoundly influenced by his maternal grandmother, Mary Senior Churchill, with whom he spent much time as a boy and young man soaking in the cultural life of her hometown of New York City. His maternal grandfather was Henry Churchill, a Philadelphia architect, city planner and designer of the first Bauhaus building in New York (demolished, but previously at Lexington Avenue and 56th Street) and the Lowell Hotel, among other distinguished buildings.
A great traveler, Conrad spent a year in France as a high-school student with an international program then named Schoolboys Abroad, learning fluent French and memorably sporting an opera cape and smoking cigarettes (this was the 1960s!) from the balcony at the Paris Opera. In his 20s, he lived for two and a half years in Tokyo, tutoring Japanese students in English, learning fluent Japanese and beginning to play the game of Go, which he continued to play and study throughout his life. He maintained respectful friendships with prominent Japanese artists and architects and had a solo sculpture show in Tokyo at Galerie Te.
On returning to New York in 1980, he worked as a sculptural assistant for artist Dennis Oppenheim. Conrad liked to tell a story of the time Dennis, against all New York City codes and common sense, lit off live explosives inside a gallery opening in SoHo, causing the building to fill up with smoke, petrified art patrons to throw themselves to the ground, and the gallerist to be heard shouting, “I’m going to kill you, Dennis!”
In Santa Fe, where Conrad resided for 40 years, he became intrigued by the design of the Paolo Soleri Amphitheater when the structure became threatened with demolition. Conrad’s ongoing “History of the Paolo Soleri Amphitheater” became the theme project of the 2016 SITE. lines biennial, much wider than a line, with a gallery he designed constituting the show’s introductory room. Over the past decade, he researched the history of Native American drama and had a book in progress.
At the time of Conrad’s passing, he was thrilled that the Soleri had won $3 million in capital outlay funding from the NM Senate, promising a renewed future for the Amphitheater.
Professionally, Conrad spent the last four years working as On-site Architect for the Bishops Lodge Hotel and Resorts. He also served as president of the Santa Fe chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 2020.
As a lover of nature and physical life, Conrad grew up camping at Tanager Lodge in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, and sailing under the tutelage of his expert sailor father, a naval architect with a Quaker whaling family in New Bedford, Mass. Conrad’s accomplishments as a sailor developed during childhood summers in Marblehead, Mass. He participated with his father and brother, Graham, in the 1978 Marion, to Bermuda Race aboard Homer’s beloved Hinckley “Bermuda 40” yawl, Capella.
In New Mexico, where the sea long ago receded, Conrad and his wife Ellen Berkovitch took up canoeing at the time they built their house in the mountains, and spent many a windy summer afternoon paddling on lakes and rivers. Conrad also excelled at backcountry skiing and swimming, and was lately devoted to ground-training his horse, Uno, in Lamy.
Words truly cannot express the sorrowful enormity of our sudden loss of our husband, brother, uncle, friend and storyteller extraordinaire. Conrad and Ellen hosted decades’ worth of gatherings of Santa Fe and New York friends and family at their table. At the time of his passing, Conrad was making plans for a vivid new life chapter, which his death so cruelly snuffed.
He is survived by his wife and best friend of 30 years, Ellen Berkovitch; his brothers Henry Skinner (Diane Campos); Graham Skinner (Joanne Morton); and Nathaniel Skinner. His bereaved nieces and nephews include Salome, Ari and Galen Skinner; Mollie (Caleb) and Colton (Vicki) Skinner; and Colton’s fourth-generation Skinners, Roxie and Demetrius, ages three and nine. Conrad is also survived by his cherished new friend, Amanda Proll.
A celebration of Conrad’s life will be held in Santa Fe in early summer. Details will be published as they become available.
Conrad frequently liked to quote his poetic heroes, William Blake and Emily Dickinson. “Energy is eternal delight.” (Blake.) “An ignorance a sunset confer upon the eye.” (Dickinson) “It only takes an instant for an impression to become a vision.”