ABC Stone in Brooklyn, N.Y. is final Venue for Exhibition About Influential Modernist Landscape Architect Lawrence Halprin
Media Contact: Nord Wennerstrom | T: 202.483.0553 | M: 202.255.7076 | E: nord@tclf.org
Exhibition about the New York City-born Halprin debuted in 2016 timed to the centennial of his birth
Washington, D.C. (August 20, 2026) - The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), a Washington, D.C.-based education and advocacy organization, today announced that a traveling photographic exhibition about the life and work of the New York City-born landscape architect Lawrence Halprin (1916-2009) will open September 10, 2026, at The Exhibition Space at ABC Stone in Brooklyn, and remain on view to October 23, 2026. This will be the final stop for The Landscape Architecture of Lawrence Halprin, which debuted ten years ago at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. and was timed to the centennial anniversary of Halprin’s birth. The exhibition features 56 newly commissioned photographs by leading landscape photographers of dozens of Halprin’s major works, ranging from recently rediscovered residential projects created early in his career in the 1950s to Portland, Oregon’s Ira Keller Forecourt Fountain, which The New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable called “one of the most important urban spaces since the Renaissance,” the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C., and capstone projects such as the Yosemite Falls approach and Stern Grove in San Francisco. The exhibition is open Monday through Friday, 8:30 AM to 4:00 PM by appointment.
The Landscape Architecture of Lawrence Halprin both honors the influential designer and calls attention to the need for informed and effective stewardship of his irreplaceable legacy. The exhibition will include original drawings and other artifacts from the Halprin Archives at the University of Pennsylvania.
On September 10, join ABC Stone, the N.Y. chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), and TCLF for the opening reception of The Landscape Architecture of Lawrence Halprin, 5:30-8:00 PM ET. Register Now. The reception includes a talk by TCLF’s Founding President & CEO, Charles A. Birnbaum, the exhibition co-curator and Halprin's friend, about Halprin’s irreplaceable legacy followed by a seated conversation with the influential landscape architect Ken Smith, with the N.Y.-based Ken Smith Workshop, who, like Halprin, moves fluidly between landscape, architecture, art, and urbanism. Register Now.
About Lawrence Halprin
Lawrence Halprin was among the foremost landscape architects of the twentieth century. His prolific career spanned more than five decades, and the innovative techniques he pioneered changed the profession forever. The New York City-born Halprin began his career in 1945 with a four-year stint working for Thomas Church in San Francisco, where he collaborated with architect George Rockrise on the renowned Dewey Donnell garden in Sonoma, California. He opened Lawrence Halprin & Associates in 1949, and his oeuvre initially included residential gardens, campuses, and housing projects. However, by the mid-1960s, his firm had turned decisively to re-designing major urban landscapes. A series of innovative parks, plazas, and pedestrian malls brought international notice and critical acclaim.
Halprin, a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), received numerous awards, including the ASLA Medal (1978), ASLA Design Medal (2003), induction into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1978), the University of Virginia Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture (1979), and the National Medal of Arts (2002), the nation’s highest honor for an artist.
In the 1968 report New York New York: A study of the quality, character, and meaning of open space in urban design by Lawrence Halprin & Associates for the New York City Housing and Development, Halprin wrote:
“Both of my grandfathers, as very young men, had the good sense as well as the imperative to leave Russia in the 1880’s and come to New York. Like so many Jewish immigrants of their day they settled on the Lower East Side, where my parents were born. I myself was born in the Bronx and then we moved to Flatbush. I have, therefore, considerable firsthand knowledge from memories, of three of the boroughs. Staten Island I do not know, though I used to go there on the ferry, and Queens only because I had some girl friends there. …
“I am, of course, a renegade New Yorker. During the war I boarded my destroyer in San Francisco and never came home. There is much to learn in that most beautiful of American cities, San Francisco, which I believe is applicable to New York, our most exciting city. I am, I must confess, grateful for the five hour transcontinental jet—it makes it joyfully possible to live with a foot on the edge of both oceans.”
“In the tradition of great artists, landscape architect Lawrence Halprin created a new and influential language,” said Charles A. Birnbaum, TCLF’s president & CEO. “ABC Stone is the perfect host for this exhibition because stone was integral to so many of Halprin’s most significant project.”
"Halprin was born in New York City and spent five decades teaching the rest of the country how to move through a city," said Lyndsey Belle Tyler, VP of Marketing and Creative Director, ABC Stone. “That this exhibition ends its ten-year journey a few miles from where it started is the kind of symmetry you can't manufacture, and it's why we built The Exhibition Space in the first place: so the discipline could have a room of its own here, among the material."
A full-color printed gallery guide accompanies the exhibition with information about each of the sites, as well as a complementary online exhibition presenting additional photography, selections from a video oral history with Halprin, and assessments about the present condition of public Halprin commissions. Thanks to the generosity of the University of Pennsylvania Architectural Archives, which holds the Halprin archives, the exhibition will include personal artifacts, drawings, sketches, and photographs.
The exhibition, part of TCLF’s Landslide series, calls attention to threatened and at-risk works of landscape architecture and landscape features, and will include photographs of some of Halprin’s most iconic projects, from Sea Ranch in northern California (photography by Saxon Holt) to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C. (photography by Roger Foley), as well as several private gardens, including recently rediscovered early 1950s-era projects. Also included are photographs of the dance deck he created for his wife Anna (photography by Tom Fox), the famous choreographer, who fundamentally influenced Halprin’s understanding of human motion through space.
About ABC Stone
ABC Stone is a full-service distributor of the world’s finest stone, specialty cladding, cubic elements, and construction products. We source our stone from six continents and take pride in our ability to procure rare and hard-to-find materials through our relationships with top quarries the world over. Our exclusive product lines are hand-selected and thoroughly vetted, thus ensuring that the ABC brand represents only the finest goods and services supporting the architecture, interior design, and design-build trades.
We strive to meet the needs of the design industry in an ever-changing global market. By diversifying our material and service offerings and providing our clients with a customer experience, ABC is redefining how the A + D industry conducts business.
About The Cultural Landscape Foundation
The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit founded in 1998 with a mission of “connecting people to places.” TCLF educates and engages the public to make our shared landscape heritage more visible, identify its value, and empower its stewards. Through its website, publishing, lectures, and other events, TCLF broadens support and understanding for cultural landscapes. TCLF is also home to the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize.
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