Remembering Barbara Dixon
The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) is deeply saddened to report that former longtime TCLF Board Member and Board Co-Chair Barbara S. Dixon died unexpectedly on Friday, September 15, 2023. She was 76. Barbara is survived by her husband of 50 years, Chris.
Dixon joined TCLF’s Board in 2004, when the organization was only six years old, became Co-Chair, with Suzanne L. Turner, in 2013, and retired from Board service in 2019. During her tenure the organization grew from being largely volunteer run, to a professional foundation with ten full-time staff that had established a firm national footprint and was about to unveil a global landscape architecture prize. Under her leadership as Co-Chair Dixon spearheaded the development of the foundation’s comprehensive, ambitious, and wide-ranging strategic plan.
Turner observed of her tenure with Dixon as a TCLF Co-Chair: “Barbara took me by the hand and taught me so many things about leadership (mainly calm competence and no wasted words), husbands, making a great salad, fashion, and understated jewelry. She was my mentor, my muse, and my friend, and she anchored TCLF on solid financial ground.”
TCLF Board Member and Treasurer Holly Sharp, a certified public accountant, said: “Barbara diligently watched over our TCLF investments and during the executive and board meetings, she would walk us through the pie charts and schedules of the portfolio, expertly fielding any question a member might have.
“But it was before or after the meetings that were really special times with Barbara. With a gorgeous Etro scarf draped around her shoulder or other fabulous fashion attire, she engaged everyone to learn what was happening in our lives and how we were each doing. She had that special quality of making you feel that you were the one person she had hoped to see at the TCLF gathering! Barbara was brilliant, caring, generous, sincere, and a dear friend whom we will all miss very much.”
Dixon began her career on Wall Street in 1970 at a firm called Hayden Stone, which later morphed into Shearson Lehman Brothers where she became a Managing Director. Her expertise is in futures trading, as a money manager (CTA). She managed several commodity funds, lectured about the futures markets throughout the U.S., in London, and in Tokyo, and wrote a weekly market letter for Shearson Lehman clients. Dixon left Lehman in 1992, and after a brief period at Smith Barney, she left Wall Street. Dixon has served on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Futures Trading Advisors, the Board of Directors of the New York Futures Exchange, the Board of Directors of FINEX and a trustee of the Futures Industry Institute. In 2005 she was inducted into the FIA (Futures Industry Association) Futures Hall of Fame, the year the program was created. A graduate of Vassar College and a history major, Dixon considered a career in urban planning before she became drawn to trading.
After leaving Wall Street she became a Vice Chairman of New Yorkers for Parks, an advocacy/research organization that promotes the import of well maintained, well programmed parks for New York City. She became involved with TCLF through her landscape architect, Doug Reed, a founding TCLF Board Member and principal at Reed Hilderbrand. Dixon lived in Manhattan and Stonington, CT, on a 260-acre farm called Manatuck, for which Reed was the landscape architect. TCLF’s nationwide Garden Dialogues program was born at Manatuck, when Dixon, Reed, and TCLF President and CEO Charles A. Birnbaum were walking the property and talking about what had been accomplished and what lay ahead. Manatuck was a featured Garden Dialogues destination in 2012, which was recorded and can be viewed on YouTube.
“Barbara was principled, a straight shooter, an excellent listener, and someone who got things done. She came to TCLF at a time when the foundation needed someone with great business acumen who was expert in financial management and investment strategies. We were fortunate that her personal loves and interests were aligned with TCLF’s own mission and programming. We also shared a passion for modernism, public parks, the art of landscape architecture, and the value of cultural landscapes,” said TCLF’s Birnbaum. “Manatuck is an example of her commitment. As Barbara says in the Garden Dialogues YouTube recording, when she and her husband Chris learned that a property, emblematic of Stonington’s agricultural heritage, was coming up for sale and could be divided into 60 to 70 lots, they put in a pre-emptive bid to protect it. Not doing so would have been irresponsible, she said. She saw a need, had the ability to do something about it, and did it. That’s leadership. Words cannot express the extent of my gratitude for Barbara’s commitment to TCLF and for her extraordinary and deeply meaningful friendship.”
