Exhibitions

Continuity and Change:
The American Academy Experience as a Progenitor of a Nature-Culture Stewardship Ethic,
an exhibition conceived by TCLF's founder and president, Charles Birnbaum, secured a planning grant from the Samuel Kress Foundation in 2004. In their documentation plans, planting plans, regional surveys, illustrative landscape "restoration," and "reconstruction" plans, early American Academy in Rome's Fellows in Landscape Architecture (between 1914 and the onset of World War II) recorded the palimpsest of preservation and design decisions made at iconic Italian villas and gardens. These invaluable records reveal solutions and approaches that are relevant today, and beg to be explained and explored in an exhibition and related publication. The work of these landscape architects will be displayed, celebrated, and considered in the context of present-day stewardship models. The exhibition will open in Rome, Italy in 2007, and will also travel in concert with a symposium of nationally recognized speakers.

Over the past year, TCLF has met with the National Building Museum to explore the prospect of the museum hosting the Jens Jensen exhibition (Chicago Cultural Center, 2002) in an expanded Washington, DC venue emphasizing Jensen's national legacy and influence.