Festive Events in NYC and Dallas Mark Launch of Oberlander Prize
Rousing remarks and high spirits at the Consulate General of Canada in New York City and the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas, accompanied the announcement that Cornelia Hahn Oberlander is the namesake of the recently established international landscape architecture prize created by The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF). The events were the culmination of five years of intensive planning and research to create and fund the Oberlander Prize, and they were also the beginning of a new chapter for the 21-year-old TCLF.
On Tuesday, October 1, the gathering on the airy twentieth floor of the recently opened Consulate General included the Oberlander Prize’s lead donors, Board Co-Chair Joan Shafran and her husband, Rob Haimes, as well as founding board members Jo Ann Nathan and Doug Reed, Board Co-Chair Mario Nievera, and board members Chris LaGuardia, Keith LeBlanc, Susannah Ross, Thomas Woltz, and Joeb Moore (the latter served on the Oberlander Prize’s Advisory Committee).
TCLF’s president and CEO Charles A. Birnbaum provided opening remarks and a recap of the Oberlander Prize’s creation. He also introduced a newly produced twelve-minute video about Oberlander, the closing seconds of which include the moving moment when the 98-year-old Oberlander learned that she would be the prize’s namesake. Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger followed with stirring remarks about the importance of Oberlander and landscape architecture. Oberlander’s landscapes, Goldberger said, “have always been places of engagement—places of connection, to architecture and to urbanism of course, but even more, to the idea of the public realm. A public building may or may not be of public benefit; a public landscape almost invariably is. We need them more than ever.” He concluded: “the other key reason for the urgency of this prize, and the logic of naming it for Cornelia Oberlander … is climate change, and the issues surrounding sustainability, where she has been a pioneer, leading the way long before it was obvious to everyone how important this is. Her leadership here is yet another reason that this new landscape prize, inspired as it is by Cornelia Oberlander, will help assure that we continue to focus our attention on what landscape architecture can do to shape the public realm, and to make it good.”
Goldberger’s cri de cœur was met with sustained and hearty applause.
Other notable attendees included contributors to the 100 Women Campaign, who have pledged at least $10,000 each to endow the Oberlander Prize: Shirley Blumberg with KPMB in Toronto, Canada; Susan Cohen with Susan Cohen Landscape Architect in Greenwich, CT; Michelle Delk with Snøhetta in New York, NY; Robin Key with RKLA Studio Landscape Architecture in New York, NY; Jane LaGuardia with LaGuardia Design Group in Watermill, NY; Marianne McKenna with KPMB in Toronto, Canada; Dorit Shahar, landscape architect in Tel Aviv, Israel, and East Hampton, NY; Annette Wilkus with SiteWorks in New York, NY; and Barbara Wilks with W Architecture and Landscape Architecture in New York, NY.
Also present were landscape architects M. Paul Friedberg, Daniel Vasini with West8 in New York, NY, and Hank White with HMWhite in New York, NY. Diane Love, who provided the voiceover for the new Oberlander video, attended with her husband, the documentary filmmaker Robert Frye. (We are grateful to Catherine Scheinman, head of Cultural Affairs and Creative Industries, Film, Television & Arts at the Consulate General for her assistance and guidance in setting up this press event).
Two days later in Dallas, the Nasher Sculpture Center was the setting for a sold-out evening reception attended by more than 150 people. The evening was made possible through the support of ABC Stone, Bartlett Tree Experts, Vermont Quarries, Victor Stanley, and Whitacre Greer. The site was the ideal venue in which to thank the Sculpture Center’s senior leadership, including Director Jeremy Strick, Director of External Affairs Jill Magnuson, and Chief Curator Jed Morse, for their invaluable advice and counsel in the creation of the Oberlander Prize. The Center is the home of the Nasher Sculpture Prize, which was inaugurated in 2014 and is focused on promoting contemporary sculpture through public engagement events about each year’s laureate. The Nasher model served as an inspiration for the Oberlander Prize, and the Nasher’s leadership were very generous in sharing their experiences in establishing the Nasher Prize. The Nasher had also hosted the first meeting of the Oberlander Prize Advisory Committee in 2018.
An hour before the reception began, Adam Greenspan of PWP Landscape Architecture in Berkeley, CA, provided an in-depth and fascinating walking tour of the Nasher Sculpture Garden, which was designed by Peter Walker. The speaking portion of the reception took place on the lower level of the museum and included remarks by Birnbaum and Strick, and a showing of the new Oberlander video. Following these remarks, doors at one end of the room opened to reveal the entrance to the sculpture garden, where the reception continued. Attendees came from throughout the United States, Canada, and The Netherlands and included TCLF board members, contributors to the 100 Women Campaign, and many other longtime supporters.
