Garden History and Landscape Studies at the Bard Graduate Center Volume 1 | Number 1 | Fall/Winter 2003/2004 Letter from the Editors Central Park the present day. This course, by extension, equips the BGC graduate in Garden History and Landscape Studies with an 150th Anniversary Special understanding of the problems and best practices involved in managing, restoring, and interpreting other historic parks, here are many ways “Reading the Landscape Central Park at the Bard Graduate Center the grounds of historic houses, and aging college campuses. A to read a landscape II” introduces the student to ecause of its importance as a designed landscape and its related course, “Keeping Time?: Preservation, Restoration, and several view- landscape texts and prints – proximity to the Bard Graduate Center, Central Park Reconstruction, and Renovation of Historic Gardens and points from which manuscripts, treatises, manu- serves as an ideal learning laboratory for Garden Landscape Architecture,” taught by Erik de Jong, asks students to do so. Within the als, books, magazines, History and Landscape Studies students. Ethan Carr’s to consider the effects of change in the landscape and how TGarden History and Landscape engravings, aquatints, and course, “Central Park: Landscape Management and they may interpret and perhaps question the official guidelines Studies program of the Bard photographs – that have been BRestoration,” uses the park to study the cultural history of the for historic landscape preservation. In this way the Garden Graduate Center we teach stu- instrumental in educating American landscape in conjunction with current preservation History and Landscape Studies program weds academic scholar- dents to look at landscapes gardeners, instructing issues and management practices. “Central Park today is the ship and preservation practice, helping students to become from a variety of angles. We patrons, and transmitting most significant landscape restoration case study in the United scholars in the field, practicing offer two separate courses advice and designs from one States, and it is not unlike the museums that BGC students professionals, or a combina- Professor Ethan Carr and Bard on how to read the landscape. period and place to another also frequent,” explains Professor Carr. He provides the unique tion of both. Graduate Center students at the In “Reading the Landscape I” over several centuries. In perspective of a landscape historian who is also a landscape continued on page 3 Ladies Pavilion, Central Park. students learn the vocabular- addition, our survey course architect. His work for the National Park Service and the New ies of garden and park design- helps students better under- York City Parks Department have furnished him with valuable ers, the influences and stand landscapes as cultural insights into how public agencies with land management constraints that guide and texts inscribed with various responsibilities function. Carr, who divides his time between the govern them, and the process- human beliefs and values. Bard Graduate Center and the University of Massachusetts at es whereby they achieve their We hope that Viewpoints Amherst, has also taught at the Harvard School of Design and ends. A separate course on will share this approach to the University of Virginia. His book, Wilderness by Design: “The Vernacular Landscape” garden history and landscape Landscape Architecture and the National Park Service, received an takes into account the place- studies with a broader American Society of Landscape Architects honor award making activities of ordinary audience outside the walls of in 1998. people that occur without the Bard Graduate Center. Professor Carr teaches the Central Park course in close col- benefit of commissioned Neither a typical organization- laboration with Central Park Conservancy staff and former park designs or formal plans. al or institutional newsletter administrator Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, using extensive field nor a full-fledged journal or trips and contact with park managers to gain information about magazine, it offers perspec- the design and management history of the park from 1853 to tives on new developments in the field. It is intended to continued on page 2 1 foster critical discourse by We hope that some of our Faculty News New Technology serving as a forum for reports readers will wish to apply for and reviews of events, pro- admission as candidates for and Landscape History jects, books, and exhibitions the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees that relate to the activities in that we offer. We hope that Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, director of Garden History and The BGC Receives a Grant from the National Endowment the Garden History and others will wish to support Landscape Studies at the Bard Graduate Center, delivered the for the Humanities to Begin Work on a Digital Archive Landscape Studies program our new program by joining keynote address at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the Garden of Historic Gardens and Landscapes at the Bard Graduate Center. the Bard Graduate Center’s Club of America on May 5 in Rye, New York. On September 17 n May 2003 the Bard Graduate Center was awarded a Because this year marks Garden Circle. (For members she spoke on “Building and Rebuilding Central Park: Is $200,000 grant by the National Endowment for the the 150th Anniversary of of the Garden Circle we offer Olmsted’s “English” Vision Humanities to develop the first component of a comprehen- Central Park and because our mini-courses and special Still Viable?” at the Fourth sive digital archive of historic gardens and landscapes. This landscape program takes seminars.) We hope that all Waddesdon Manor pilot project, “The Villa as Landscape Type,” has as its advantage of the Bard readers will in the future Symposium, organized in Imain focus the villas of ancient Rome and the villas of the Graduate Center’s proximity share with us their viewpoints association with The Paul Italian Renaissance and Baroque periods. This core material will to the park to use it as a on landscape making, land- Mellon Centre for Studies be supplemented by images of other European villas of the 17th learning laboratory, we are scape keeping, and the in British Art. On May 18, and 18th centuries, 19th century English and American villas, featuring Central Park in this importance of place to people 2004, Rogers will be a and modernist villas of the 20th century. first issue of Viewpoints. As in a rapidly changing world. lecturer aboard the Queen With this award, BGC is taking the first step toward realizing our report on the conference Mary II. During the course one of the goals of its Garden History and Landscape Studies hosted by the Central Park of the voyage from New York to Southampton she will conduct a Program: to develop a comprehensive online digital archive of Conservancy, the Department Elizabeth Barlow Rogers five-session mini-course sponsored by Oxford University on historic landscape sites and subjects that advances teaching and of Parks, and the Project for Editor landscape design history. learning in the fields of academic landscape design history and Public Spaces this past June professional historic landscape preservation. This ongoing and indicates, the exchange of Erik de Jong Erik de Jong, professor of Garden History and Landscape Studies long-term project will involve an expanding body of scholars, good ideas and information Associate Editor and Associate Director at the Bard Graduate Center, has accept- visual resources professionals, and educational technologists. It in the area of park gover- ed the newly established Clusius Chair, an honorary professor- will assemble images and supplementary educational materials nance and administration is ship in Garden History and Landscape Studies, at the University that are otherwise difficult to obtain. something that we strongly of Leiden, the oldest academic institution in The Netherlands. The framework for this undertaking was first outlined at a believe in. Created by the Clusius Foundation, with important longtime ties workshop funded by the NEH in March 2002. The meeting to the Leiden Botanical Garden (founded in 1593), the position brought together scholars and new media experts to discuss how Charles Capen McLaughlin and Sara American Landscape History, which will entail teaching and organiz- a digital archive might further the growth of landscape studies Cedar Miller at the Arsenal, Central recently published McLaughlin's ing research. Professor de by making materials related to the study of place broadly accessi- Park, headquarters of the New York extensively annotated facsimile edi- Jong’s appointment will there- ble to teachers and students. Participants in this workshop deter- City Department of Parks, on tion of Walks and Talks of an fore strengthen ties between the mined that the proposed archive, in order to be educationally October 31, the first stop on a tour American Farmer in England (see Bard Graduate Center and pro- useful, should be subject- and site-based, rather than collection- of Central Park. A victim of polio page 5). Miller is the author of fessional colleagues in Europe. based. shortly before the invention of the Central Park: An American Master- Recent publications by Erik As BGC staff prepared their initial proposal for the project Salk vaccine, McLaughlin, editor-in- piece (see page 6). de Jong include “Nicodemus according to preliminary advice received from NEH grant officer chief of the The Tessin: Travels in Holland in Barbara Ashbrook, they realized that