Shaking Their Yankee Foundations: Evolving Modernist Ambitions
Media Contact: Nord Wennerstrom, Wennerstrom Communications | T: 202.255.7076 | E: nord@wennerco.com
Symposium October 8, 2010 Spotlights Boston’s Rich Post War Landscape Heritage
Washington, DC (August 26, 2010) – The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), with local partner, Historic New England, will host Shaking Their Yankee Foundations: Evolving Modernist Ambitions, October 8, 2010, at the Lyman Estate in Waltham. This is the seventh of nine regional symposia held in conjunction with the publication of Shaping the American Landscape: New Profiles from the Pioneers of American Landscape Design Project (University of Virginia Press, 2009). The symposium will examine a vibrant period of modernist landscape architecture in Boston noted for great innovation and experimentation.
Shaking Their Yankee Foundations will feature eleven speakers examining the lead-up to modern landscape architecture, a macro view of modernism in the Boston area, and first hand recollections by practitioners who directly affected the course of Post War landscape architecture in the region. Additional speakers will discuss the legacy of modernist work in Boston. The full day includes a catered lunch. Complete schedule and registration information: http://tclf.org/sites/default/files/microsites/pioneers/boston/index.html.
Featured Event and Speakers – a panel discussion with the seminal figures credited with introducing Modernist landscape architecture to Boston:
Carol Johnson, Stu Dawson, John Frey – Perspectives of the Participants
• Carol Johnson, subject of a TCLF Pioneers Oral History (http://tclf.org/oral-history/carol-r-johnson), has spent the last 50 years transforming urban spaces, campuses, industrial sites, and neglected waterfronts into vital, celebrated parks and public spaces. In October of 1998, Ms. Johnson received the American Society of Landscape Architects' Medal. In January of 2000, she received a Gold Medal from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society.
• Stu Dawson, subject of an upcoming TCLF oral history, is a founding principal at Sasaki Associates. Major Post War projects in the Boston area during Dawson’s early tenure include Copley Square, Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park and the Christian Science Center. He has been an instructor, guest lecturer, design critic and juror to numerous academic institutions, among them, Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Cornell University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and others.
• John Frey has practiced for more than 55 years as a registered landscape architect in Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut. He spent five years with Sasaki, Walker Associates before founding Mason and Frey with Max Mason in 1963. Significant projects include the Lexington Center Mall, Lexington, MA, the Bicentennial Park in Arlington, MA, and university campus master planning and site design.
The symposium will also feature two panel discussions that will echo each other, collectively placing a spotlight on three landscape types: residential subdivisions, urban/town planning and campus landscapes. The first, emphasizing the Picturesque and Beaux-Arts era will be led by noted landscape historian, preservation consultant and Olmsted expert Arleyn Levee, with landscape historian Dr. Elizabeth Hope Cushing and professor and architectural scholar Dr. Keith Morgan. Mirroring this panel, Gary Hilderbrand, a principal with Reed Hilderbrand landscape architecture and an assistant professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, will provide the symposium’s title talk followed by a panel discussion emphasizing the Modernist era in New England, featuring architects David Fixler, Tim Love and Joeb Moore. A closing panel discussion will engage the audience while reflecting on Boston’s rich modernist legacy.
The Boston symposium is organized by The Cultural Landscape Foundation in partnership with Historic New England. Garden Design magazine is the Presenting Sponsor, LandscapeForms is the 2010 Series Sponsor and the American Society of Landscape Architects is the Educational Partner. For additional information, log on to www.tclf.org or call 202.483.0553. Registration is available online at http://tclf.org/sites/default/files/microsites/pioneers/boston/index.ht…. Space is limited.
About The Cultural Landscape Foundation
The 12-year old Cultural Landscape Foundation (www.tclf.org) provides people with the ability to see, understand, and value landscape architecture and its practitioners, in the way many people have learned to do with buildings and their designers. Through its Web site, lectures, outreach, and publishing, TCLF broadens the support and understanding for cultural landscapes nationwide to help safeguard our priceless landscape heritage for future generations.
About Historic New England
Historic New England is the oldest, largest, and most comprehensive regional heritage organization in the nation. We bring history to life while preserving the past for everyone interested in exploring the authentic New England experience from the seventeenth century to today. Historic New England owns and operates thirty-six historic homes and landscapes spanning five states. The organization shares the region’s history through vast collections, publications, public programs, museum properties, archives, and family stories that document more than 400 years of life in New England. For more information visit www.HistoricNewEngland.org.
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