Why Landscape is a Verb (and Not a Noun)
A lecture by landscape architect and author Laurie Olin
July 30, 2pm
In the Whitsell Auditorium at the Portland Art Museum
There is more to landscape than folks with a truck planting shrubs. For thousands of years, humans have interacted with their environment: loving it, fearing it, changing it, and considering it a subject for art, philosophy, preservation, and recreation. It shapes us as we shape it.
No designer impacted larger swaths of the Oregon landscape than John Yeon, from his single-handed saving of Chapman Point and views south from Ecola State Park to his critical 50 years of work helping to preserve the Columbia River Gorge. In conjunction with the Portland Art Museum’s Yeon retrospective, “Quest for Beauty,” Olin, one America’s leading landscape architects of the last 50 years, reflects on the designer’s role in shaping the larger landscapes we live in.
Tickets
Click HERE to purchase tickets
Students and John Yeon Center members can attend for free but must reserve.
About Laurie Olin
Born in Wisconsin and raised in Alaska, Olin received a degree in architecture from the University of Washington in 1961. He practiced in Seattle and New York before traveling to England on a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972-1973 and to Rome as a Fellow in Landscape Architecture at the American Academy in Rome in 1974-1976.
Among Olin’s many landmark projects are: Battery Park City, Bryant Park, and Columbus Circle, New York; the Barnes Foundation and Rodin Museum, Philadelphia; and the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden and Washington Monument grounds, Washington D.C. Olin is a frequent lecturer and has authored or co-authored nine books to date. His drawings and paintings have been in museums and galleries both in the U.S. and abroad. A 1999 Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, he is the recipient of numerous awards including in 2013 the National Medal of the Arts and Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture.