This symposium was a forum for the discussion of the formation of a multifaceted American tradition of garden and landscape design that is based on the interpretation and adaptation of trends imported into the United States from the eighteenth century until today.
Questions addressed by the forum included the American reception of foreign design practices and theories, whether imported from the West, as in the case of the Italian Renaissance garden, or from the East, as in the case of the Japanese-style garden. The forum also focused on the American reaction to the application of foreign ideas on native soil in the sense expressed by Louise Shelton in 1915: "Might we not give serious consideration to evolving some day a type peculiarly American, inasmuch as it would embody the poetic and artistic sense of our country?" (Beautiful Gardens in America). Participants engaged in cross-cultural comparisons and considered the cultural, social, and economic aspects that allow for the identification of a particular garden "style" with a geographic and political entity, and how the forms of a local tradition, when transposed into a new territory, take on new sets of values and are expressive of new ideals.
SYMPOSIUM PROGRAM
Friday, March 18, 2011
9:00 - 9:20 am - Introduction by Raffaella Fabiani Giannetto
9:30 - 11:50 am - Panel I
Moderator: Aaron Wunsch
From Capability to Peculiarity: Adapting British Principles to American Practices
Caren Yglesias, Adjunct faculty, Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, University of Maryland
These Beautiful Pleasure-Grounds of Death: Cross-Cultural Comparisons of Values and Meaning in the Inceptive Responses to the Parisian Garden Cemetery and its American Interpretation
Jill Sinclair, Independent scholar
The American Translation of the European Picturesque
Emily T. Cooperman, ARCH Consultancy
John Dixon Hunt, Emeritus Professor, University of Pennsylvania
12:00 - 1:00 pm - Lunch break
1:00 - 3:20 pm - Panel II
Moderator: John Dixon Hunt
"Tree Foreigners" in Nineteenth-Century America
Judith Major, Professor, University of Kansas School of Architecture
Growing Home: Thomas Affleck (1812-1868), Immigrant and Advisor in the American South
James Schissel, PhD Candidate, Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Defending the American Genius Loci: The Reception of Foreign Trends in "Garden and Forest"
Eric MacDonald, Assistant Professor, School of Environmental Design, University of Georgia
3:20 - 3:35 pm - Coffee break
3:35 - 5:15 pm - Panel III
Moderator: Julie Davis
Rhetorical Landscapes: Japanese Gardens at California World's Fairs, 1893-1940
Kendall Brown, Professor, Dept. of Art, California State University
Kubota Gardens and Bloedel Reserves: Two Japanese Gardens, Two Inscriptions
Thaisa Way, Associate Professor, Dept. of Landscape Architecture, University of Washington
Saturday March 19, 2011
9:00 - 10:40 - Panel IV
Moderator: Franca Trubiano
West Meets East at North Farm
Sara Butler, Associate Professor, Roger Williams University.
Beatrix Farrand (1872-1959), and the Nature of the Modern American Garden
Graeme Moore, The Old School, Dunsyre (UK)
10:40 -10:55 - Coffee break
10:55 - 12:30 - Panel V
Moderator: Laurie Olin
Tides of Italian Influence: The American Colonial Garden and the Garden of the Country Place Era
Raffaella Fabiani Giannetto, Assistant Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Pennsylvania
Camera Bella: The Printed Photograph and the Perception of the Italian Garden in America
Rebecca Warren Davidson, Independent Scholar
12:30 - 1:30 pm - Lunch break
1:30 - 3:50 pm - Panel VI
Moderator: David Leatherbarrow
Tunnard Adapted to Postwar America
Lance Neckar, Chair, Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Minnesota
German Landscape Design in American Publications (1900-1945)
Michael Lee, Post-Doctoral Associate in Garden and Landscape Studies Dumbarton Oaks
Traveling Landscapes: Richard Neutra as a Landscape Architect
Johannes Stoffler, Visiting Fellow at the GSD - Harvard University.
3:50 - 4:05 pm - Coffee break
4:05 pm - Plenary Talk
Dead Space: Reclaiming New Orleans' Cities of the Dead
Frank Matero, Professor of Architecture, University of Pennsylvania
4:30 pm - Concluding remarks
5:30 pm - Closing reception
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