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Beth Meyer Joins Garden and Landscape Studies as a Visiting Scholar

Posted On October 31, 2016 | 10:36 am | by Press | Permalink

We are pleased to welcome Beth Meyer, who will be joining Dumbarton Oaks as a visiting scholar from November 1 to November 30, 2016.

Professor Meyer is widely recognized for her theoretical writings about the intersection of modern conceptions and experiences of nature, environmental ethics, and contemporary landscape design. Her recent publications include “Sustaining Beauty. The Performance of Appearance,” “Slow Landscape. A New Erotics of Sustainability,” “Grafting, Splicing, Hybridizing: Strange Beauties of the Australian Garden,” and “Beyond Sustaining Beauty: Musings on a Manifesto.” During a 2016–17 sabbatical, she is completing a book manuscript, The Margins of Modernity. Theories and Practices of Landscape Architecture.

In 2015, Meyer founded the UVA Center for Cultural Landscapes, a transdisciplinary initiative. Since Meyer’s graduate studies in landscape architecture and historic preservation, she has been fascinated by the thick description of landscapes—places replete with cultural memories and biophysical processes. This perspective has afforded her opportunities to research, interpret, plan, and design significant cultural landscapes such as the UVA Academical Village (EDAW 1980s), Bryant Park in NYC (Laurie Olin 1980s), the Wellesley College campus outside of Boston (MVVA 1990s), the St. Louis Gateway Arch Grounds, a modernist memorial landscape designed by Saarinen and Kiley (MVVA 2000s), and the White House Kitchen Garden (NPS 2016).

Meyer is a registered landscape architect who has worked for EDAW, Hanna/Olin, and Michael Vergason. She taught at Cornell University and the Harvard Graduate School of Design before joining the UVA faculty, in 1993, where she teaches design studios and theory courses. She has served as the dean of the School of Architecture as well as the chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture. Meyer currently holds a Presidential appointment to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, a seven-member design review board responsible for the monumental core and significant public spaces of Washington, D.C.