The Cultural Landscape Foundation Awarded $35,000 in National Endowment for the Arts Art Works Grant
Media Contact: Nord Wennerstrom | T: 202.483.0553 | M: 202.225.7076 | E: nord@tclf.org
Funding aids new traveling photographic exhibition The Landscape Architecture of Lawrence Halprin
Washington, D.C. (May 10, 2016) – The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) today announced it has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Art Works grant totaling $35,000. The grant provides funding to help mount a new traveling photographic exhibition The Landscape Architecture of Lawrence Halprin, which will open at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. in October, 2016. The exhibition about the life and work of landscape architect Lawrence Halprin (1916-2009) coincides with the 100th anniversary of the year of his birth. Halprin was, without doubt, among the foremost landscape architects of the twentieth century. His prolific career spanned more than five decades, with highlights that include the FDR Memorial (in Washington, D.C.), Freeway Park (in Seattle, Washington), and the Portland Open Space Sequence (in Portland, Oregon). His firm was a seedbed for many talented designers now celebrated in their own right, and the innovative techniques he pioneered changed the field forever. While the traveling exhibition will honor Halprin and his career, it will also call attention to the need for the informed and effective stewardship of his irreplaceable legacy. Like much of the work of prominent landscape architects in the post-War period, many of Halprin’s designs are now in a diminished state, while some face an uncertain future.
The exhibition will feature newly commissioned photographs of Halprin’s work and other personal ephemera, including drawings, models, and video. It will be accompanied by a full-color printed gallery guide and an online exhibition. Throughout the summer of 2016, TCLF will also orchestrate What's Out There Weekend - The Public Landscapes of Lawrence Halprin, which will offer free, expert-led tours of Halprin’s projects across the country, from Portland, Oregon, to Charlottesville, Virginia.
"The National Endowment for the Arts Art Works Grant is extremely important in helping to realize the exhbition about Lawrence Halprin," said Charles A. Birnbaum, TCLF's president and CEO, "and we are very grateful to the NEA and the jurors for this honor."
Halprin’s oeuvre initially included residential gardens, campuses, and housing projects, but by the mid-1960s, his firm, Lawrence Halprin & Associates, had turned decisively to creating urban landscapes. A series of innovative plazas, parks, pedestrian malls, and public spaces brought international notice and critical acclaim. For example, when the Ira Keller Fountain (completed in 1970) opened in Portland, Oregon, New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable called it “one of the most important urban spaces since the Renaissance.”
About the National Endowment for the Arts Art Works grants
As the only funder in the country that supports the arts in all 50 states and five U.S. jurisdictions, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) will award $82,357,050 in grants to fund 1,148 projects in the second major grant announcement of its 50th anniversary year. Grants will be awarded in 13 artistic disciplines or fields plus arts research, along with partnership agreements to U.S. states, jurisdictions, and regions.
To join the Twitter conversation about this announcement, please use #NEASpring16. For a complete listing of projects recommended for Art Works grant support, please visit the NEA Web site at http://arts.gov.
About The Cultural Landscape Foundation
The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), founded in 1998, is a non-profit foundation that provides people with the ability to see, understand and value landscape architecture, its practitioners, and our shared landscape legacy in the way many people have learned to do with buildings and their designers. Through its website, lectures, outreach and publishing, TCLF broadens the support and understanding for cultural landscapes nationwide. TCLF makes a special effort to heighten the awareness of those who impact cultural landscapes, assist groups and organizations working to increase the appreciation and recognition of cultural landscapes, and develop educational tools for young people to better connect them to their cultural landscape environs.
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