Catherine Howett (honoris causa)
Statement: Catherine Howett is the living definition of a renaissance woman. She has a distinguished career of practice, teaching, and scholarship. When she decided to pursue landscape architecture as a profession, she and her husband, John (an art historian), were raising their four beautiful daughters. Their household was one of intellectual discourse with Emory faculty colleagues, blended with the clarity of a simple life lived in and with nature. Catherine is a lifelong gardener, while John’s passion ranged from his Early Italian Renaissance concentration to modern art; he curated exhibitions of contemporary painting at the Atlanta High Museum of Art. Catherine brought this breadth and holistic view of human history to her new field of study with a vision that was radical for the field.
Catherine was one of the first to explore environmental art in the spectrum of contemporary practice, public art, and environmental studies. She wrote about the phenomenon from a theoretical perspective but also explored its impacts in a five-year design partnership with sculptor George Trakas on the campus of Washington State University. Her numerous publications focus on the theory and practice of American landscape architecture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her exhaustive published history of Reynolda Gardens, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, exemplifies her approach to interpreting design in its cultural and personal context. Catherine is the consummate teacher, mentor, juror, and critic. She is professor emerita in the School of Environmental Design at the University of Georgia and a former Senior Fellow in garden and landscape studies at Dumbarton Oaks.
—Suzanne Turner, September 28, 2019