Landscape historian John Dixon Hunt will deliver the Kenneth I. Helphand Endowed Lecture in Landscape Architecture on Thursday, February 19, at 6 p.m. in Lawrence Hall Room 177, 1190 Franklin Boulevard in Eugene. A reception at 5:30 p.m. precedes the lecture. The event is free and open to the public.
Hunt is professor emeritus of landscape history and theory at the University of Pennsylvania and former director of Studies in Landscape Architecture at Dumbarton Oaks, in Washington, D.C. His lecture in Eugene is entitled "design is of things not yet appearing": gardens and landscapes on paper.
The founding editor of Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, Hunt has published widely and to great critical acclaim. Recent books include Historical Ground: The Role of History in Landscape Architecture (Routledge, 2014), and The World of Gardens (University of Chicago, 2012).
Hunt’s current research centers on the roles of history and typology in contemporary landscape architecture. He coedited the six-volume A Cultural History of Gardens (Bloomsbury, 2013), and edited the Modern volume and contributed the chapter on "Design" to the Mediaeval volume.
He has received numerous honors and awards including the title of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture (for exceptional endeavors in landscape architecture), election to the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Venice, and a residency at the American Academy in Rome. He received his PhD from Bristol University.
Born in England, Hunt began his academic career focusing on English literature, teaching the subject and writing articles and books on topics ranging from T.S. Eliot to a critical commentary on Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” His focus later shifted to landscape history, authoring books including Garden and Grove: The Italian Renaissance Garden in the English Imagination: 1600-1750 (J. M. Dent, 1986), Greater Perfections (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), Picturesque Garden in Europe (Thames & Hudson, 2002), and The Afterlife of Gardens (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
His teaching career includes positions at the University of Michigan, Vassar College, Exeter, and elsewhere. He became professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 1994, serving as department char of landscape architecture and regional planning and interim dean. He serves as a visiting professor in landscape architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
The Kenneth I. Helphand Endowed Lecture in Landscape Architecture is sponsored by the Department of Landscape Architecture. The lecture is free and open to the public.
