Gala in New York City Honors TCLF's First 25 Years
Some 140 people, coming from as far as California and Canada, gathered at the storied Century Association in New York City to honor the 25th anniversary of The Cultural Landscape Foundation. Thanks to the skilled guidance of event co-chairs, Board Member Mario Nievera, Brian Sawyer, and Thomas Woltz, the evening had the feel of an extended and celebratory family reunion (from the beginning Woltz insisted there would be no D.J. or silent auction).
The 176-year-old club, whose members have included some of the nation’s most celebrated authors, artists, and others, including Mark Twain, Frederick Law Olmsted, John Kennett, and Ralph Ellison, who called the club’s martini “one of our most august institutions,” was the perfect setting because the art and profession of landscape architecture was on equal footing with the other arts. The 1891 building was designed by Mead McKim & White (all members) and is more welcoming, cozy, and clubby, than palatial, and perfectly scaled for the gathering.
The evening began with a cocktail hour in the club’s lower-level billiard room with a pianist enlivening the atmosphere. Guests arrived, some not having seen each other in years; there were hugs and kisses and large and small clusters of people in conversation. And there was much laughter. Shortly before everyone moved to the first floor for dinner, TCLF’s Founder, President and CEO, Charles A. Birnbaum, addressed the group. He recalled a telling revelation from his childhood when digging is his grandparents’ vegetable garden in New London, CT, he unearthed a “Moxie” pop bottle; he realized that landscapes held stories and cultural narratives. He discussed how the cultural dimension to landscape became a guiding principle that informed his work for a decade in New York City working on historic landscapes such as Prospect Park and the Emerald Necklace, and his fifteen years at the National Park Service where he authored the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards with Guidelines for the Treatment of Cultural Landscapes. And it anchors his creation of TCLF.
The quarter-century trajectory of the foundation was informed, shaped and guided by many of the attendees. Birnbaum cited several who have advised and molded him and the foundation, including former founding board members Elizabeth Brabec, Arleyne Levee, and Jan Rothschild. He singled out others in the room including former board members Sylvia Rose Augustus, Shaun Duncan, and Mac Griswold and current board member Susan Turner. He saluted the one remaining founding Board Member, Doug Reed, who could not be present, and spoke of the wisdom, clarity, and determination of the late Sally Boasberg, a founding co-chair upon whose dining room table the foundation’s legal papers were signed in 1998.
Birnbaum’s remarks were spirited, inspiring, reverential, sprinkled with humor, and forward looking. He acknowledged the forthcoming announcement of the next Oberlander Prize laureate and thanked Board Member Joan Shafran and her husband Rob Haimes for their lead gift in 2017 which helped make the prize a reality. Birnbaum talked about the next phase of the Race and Space Initiative, which will see that addition of some 100 sites associated with African Americans added to TCLF’s What’s Out There database of cultural landscapes. He also thanked former Board Member Alan Ward who recently donated his extensive digital photographic archives with more than 2,500 images of iconic landscapes worldwide.
The dinner in the high-ceilinged first-floor gallery, which was hung with large-scale landscape-themed artwork by current club members, was equally festive and gregarious, and featured insightful and deeply personal remarks be several guests. Event co-chair, Thomas Woltz, a Board Member of eighteen years, cited Robert Pogue Harrison’s reference to the myth of Cura, and the origins of mankind, and the idea of the vocation of care and that a landscape architect is a vocation of care. He also cited Virginia Woolf’s entry in her diary after hosting a New Year’s eve dinner for friends. She wrote “stay this moment” because it was a moment when she was truly happy. Woltz said that night at the Century was a moment when everyone assembled was happy.
Elizabeth K. Meyer, a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Virginia, chair of the Oberlander Prize Advisory Committee, and one of Birnbaum’s longtime friends, spoke of the gratifying intellectual adventures and work that she and many others in the room embarked on (usually following a phone call from Birnbaum). And she noted that the foundation was the product of an entrepreneurial spirit and that it occupied a space that previously had not existed, but which has great purpose. Meyer was followed by Gary R. Hilderband, a professor (and current chair) in the department of landscape architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and another longtime Birnbaum friend. He too was part of the Oberlander Prize Advisory Committee and spoke of TCLF’s influence and impact. He noted that Birnbaum was the all-time greatest spokesperson for and promoter of the profession in the United States, an observation that was met with applause.
The following morning, longtime sponsors ABC Stone hosted a brunch for present and former Board Members and Stewardship Council Members. ABC’s ever-gracious Lyndsey Bell Tyler greeted the guests and made brief remarks. Birnbaum then presented a tribute to former longtime Board Member and Board Co-Chair Barbara S. Dixon, who passed away suddenly and unexpectedly the Friday before the anniversary celebration. He had prepared a powerpoint with photographs of Dixon at numerous TCLF events during her fifteen-year Board tenure, many including people who were present at the brunch. Birnbaum concluded by inviting attendees to offer their own reflections and recollections. Among those who spoke were current Board Members Keith LeBlanc and Joan Shafran, as well as former Board Members Elizabeth Brabec, Shaun Duncan, Glenn Stach, Alan Ward, and Alexis Woods. The remarks were emotional, personal, amusing, and loving; very much in the spirit of an extended family reunion.
