Prof. Beardsley revitalizes program at Harvard’s Dumbarton Oaks
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John Beardsley, Senior Lecturer in Landscape Architecture, is completing his first year as Director of the Garden and Landscape Studies program at Harvard’s Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington, D.C. Established in 1969, the program supports the study of gardens and the history of landscape architecture around the world from antiquity to the present.
Beardsley has been working to create better exchanges between the landscape programs at Dumbarton Oaks and the GSD. Two GSD faculty members, Mark Laird, Senior Lecturer in the History of Landscape Architecture, and Dorothee Imbert, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, have joined the program’s senior fellows committee, an advisory group; another, Peter Del Tredici, Lecturer in Landscape Architecture, presented at Dumbarton Oaks last March. This summer, three paid landscape architecture interns, two of them current GSD students, Emily Bonifaci and Justin Scherma, will be in residence at Dumbarton Oaks, working in the gardens in the morning and on research projects in the afternoon.
Beardsley is also aiming to complement the program’s traditional focus on garden history with an emphasis on contemporary design and larger landscape issues. This spring, he initiated a new series of temporary installations of contemporary art and design intended to provide current perspectives on the institution’s remarkable gardens and collections. The first project is by the sculptor Charles Simonds, well known for clay landscapes and dwellings that document the wanderings of a fantastical civilization of little people. Titled Landscape/Body/Dwelling, the installation is dispersed through the Dumbarton Oaks gardens, museum, and Rare Book room.
“Dumbarton Oaks is an amazing resource, which has not played a role at Harvard commensurate with its resources,” says Beardsley. “This renewed activity is one of many ways that the GSD can strengthen its relations within the University and is one more way to realize Dean Mohsen Mostafavi’s commitment to building ties with other Harvard Schools and programs.”
Initially an outgrowth of the library and gardens created by the Robert Blisses, original owners of Dumbarton Oaks, and horticulturist Beatrix Farrand, the 1950s landscape program was developed to train landscape architects and serve as a resource for landscape historians. The Garden and Landscape Studies program now offers academic-year and summer fellowships, hosts a lecture series and an annual symposium, and produces publications on landscape history. John Beardsley’s goal is to make Dumbarton Oaks a more vital part of the Harvard community by reconnecting it to issues of contemporary practice and provide training for designers as well as for historians.Image: Mental Earth, 2003, by Charles Simonds; metal, polyurethane, clay, and wood. Collection of the Artist. Installed in the Orangery at Dumbarton Oaks as part of the exhibition Charles Simonds: Landscape/Body/Dwelling. Photo by Joe Mills, Dumbarton Oaks.