2019 Year in Review
With you as our champion, The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) marked its 21st year with an exceptional record of accomplishments, including the creation of the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, the first international landscape architecture prize with a $100,000 award. Advocacy and education also continued to be the primary ways we fulfill our mission of “connecting people to places.” Looking to 2020, we will be advancing more ambitious projects, programs, events, and initiatives to increase the understanding of, and support for, landscape architecture, its practitioners, and our shared landscape legacy.
Here are highlights from the ‘2019 Year in Review’ that your generosity made possible:
- ORGANIZED – Second Wave of Modernism IV: Making Space within Place conference and related tours in Dallas, Texas, drew several hundred people from throughout North America. What’s Out There Weekends of free, expert-led tours in Nashville, San Francisco, and San Diego were also a hit, as were Garden Dialogues in Connecticut, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.;
- ADVOCATED – Landslide 2019: Living in Nature focused on sites across the United States—from New York City to Hawaii—threatened by the effects of climate change;
- EXPANDED – TCLF’s What's Out There (WOT) database of North America’s cultural landscapes surpassed 2,100 sites, and we unveiled new WOT guidebooks and online guides to Nashville, San Francisco, and San Diego. The online What’s Out There Cultural Landscapes Guide to Baltimore was also launched, one of five such guides produced by TCLF in partnership with the National Park Service. Notably, the five guides received an Honor Award in Communications from the American Society of Landscape Architects;
- EXPLORED – TCLF’s third international excursion explored historic and contemporary sites in Porto and Lisbon, Portugal, in March, and the notable gardens of the Cote d’Azur were featured during a weeklong course taught at the Chateau de la Napoule in the South of France in July;
- INCREASED – Editing is underway for the Robert Royston Pioneers oral history, and filming was completed for the Pamela Burton Pioneers oral history;
- CONTINUED – Three traveling photographic exhibitions (one each about Lawrence Halprin, Oehme, van Sweden, and Dan Kiley) were hosted at myriad cultural institutions throughout the United States, including the University of California (UC), Berkeley; UC Riverside, Palm Desert; the University of Arkansas; the University of Georgia; and the Sheldon Museum in Middlebury, Vermont;
- PUBLISHED – Central Park’s Adventure-Style Playgrounds: Renewal of a Midcentury Legacy was published by Louisiana State University Press in late 2019, and What’s Out There guidebooks to Nashville, San Francisco, and San Diego are also now available;
- CREATED –For 21 years, TCLF has fulfilled its mission of “connecting people to places” through education and advocacy. In 2019 that work advanced substantially with the creation of the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, the first prize of its kind with a $100,000 award. The Oberlander Prize will honor a living practitioner, collaborative, or team for their creative, courageous, and visionary work in the field of landscape architecture. It is the culmination of five years of planning and was made possible, in part, by a lead gift of $1 million from TCLF Board Co-Chair Joan Shafran and her husband, Rob Haimes. Conferred biennially beginning in 2021 and overseen by an independent curator and a five-person jury, the Oberlander Prize will also include two years of public engagement activities.
Here are some details from the 2019 Year in Review:
Landslide, our annual thematic report about threatened and at-risk landscapes, continues to be one of our most high-profile and effective initiatives. Landslide 2019: Living in Nature focused on sites that collectively demonstrate the broad range of effects from climate change.
TCLF has three monographic Landslide exhibitions traveling concurrently: In 2019 The Landscape Architecture of Lawrence Halprin was hosted by the University of Arkansas; The New American Garden: The Landscape Architecture of Oehme, van Sweden was shown at the University of Georgia; and The Landscape Architecture Legacy of Dan Kiley was hosted by UC Berkeley and by UC Riverside, Palm Desert, in conjunction with Modernism Week in adjacent Palm Springs, and by the Sheldon Museum in Middlebury, Vermont.
Advocacy efforts for several at-risk Landslide sites also continued, including Olmsted’s Jackson Park in Chicago, Illinois; the Elizabeth Street Garden in New York City; the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.; and the Dan Kiley-designed Marcus Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Meanwhile, years of effort on behalf of M. Paul Friedberg’s Peavey Plaza in Minneapolis resulted in a sensitive rehabilitation for which the city received TCLF’s Stewardship Excellence Award.
What’s Out There, the searchable online database of designed landscapes, has grown to include more than 2,100 entries, 11,000 images, and 1,100 designer profiles, making it the nation’s most comprehensive database of its kind. TCLF held What’s Out There Weekends in Nashville, San Francisco, and San Diego.
Garden Dialogues, now in its eighth year, explored how great gardens are created. The 2019 Dialogues featured exceptional private commissions in Connecticut, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. The Dialogues were made possible by the support of Bartlett Tree Experts, Vermont Quarries, and Cottages & Gardens Media.
Symposia, Conferences, and Technical Assistance: The Second Wave of Modernism IV: Making Space within Place conference and related tours in Dallas, Texas, were a huge success. Technical assistance was provided by TCLF’s president for Independence and Polk Parks in Charlotte, North Carolina; Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania; Brackenridge Park in San Antonio, Texas; Boston City Hall in Massachusetts; the Evergreens Cemetery in New York City; Playland Park in Rye, New York; and many other sites.
Publications: The latest addition to TCLF’s Modern Landscapes: Transition & Transformation series, Central Park’s Adventure-Style Playgrounds: Renewal of a Midcentury Legacy was authored by Marie Warsh and published by Louisiana State University Press in late 2019. What’s Out There guidebooks to Nashville, San Francisco, and San Diego were also published by TCLF.
Online Growth: TCLF’s website has enjoyed remarkable growth over the past year: Total page views and site visits grew by nearly 16% and 18%, respectively; and our YouTube channel viewership showed a nearly 25% increase over 2018.
Media Coverage: The announcement of the Oberlander Prize resulted in global coverage –in Australia, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Great Britain, Malaysia, Singapore, and dozens of other locations. Coverage also appeared in major domestic media outlets, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and in such specialty media outlets as ArchDaily, Architect Magazine, Archinect, Architect’s Newspaper, Crain’s Chicago, Curbed, Landscape Architecture Magazine, and Planetizen.
Fellowships: The Sally Boasberg Founder's Fellowship supported its eighth Fellow, Sarai Carter. TCLF also hosted What’s Out There Cultural Landscape Fellow Katherine Ackerman, who worked in Washington, D.C., and KTUA Cultural Landscape Fellow Kelsey Kaline, who worked in San Diego, California.
Thank You. This past year would not have been possible without the support of many individuals, organizations, and others, including our Season of Events Sponsors ABC Stone, Bartlett Tree Experts, and Victor Stanley, and our annual sponsor, the American Society of Landscape Architects.