Organizer: Planting Fields Foundation
Location: Planting Fields Arboretum State Historic Park, Oyster Bay, New York
Date: October 20 and 21, 2022
We are seeking contributions for a symposium to be held in October 2022 (exact dates TBA) that will examine the residential projects of the Olmsted landscape architecture firm. Organized in conjunction with Olmsted 200, an initiative of the National Association for Olmsted Parks and partners across the nation to mark the bicentennial of the birth of Frederick Law Olmsted, the symposium will shed light on and contribute to Olmsted’s living legacy. Planting Fields, a 409-acre extant Olmsted Brothers designed landscape, located in Oyster Bay, New York, will host a two-day symposium bringing together experts in the fields of landscape architecture history and practice to examine the understudied residential projects of the Olmsted firm, spanning from 1857-1979.
With an emphasis on the Olmsted firm’s work on domestic spaces and private estates, we are calling for papers that consider the following themes:
-Patronage, taste-making, and place-making for a private context
-American landscapes and their evocation of European precedents
-The English landscape tradition and its influences on private Olmsted firm-designed properties
-Impact of the Olmsted firm on residential landscape design
-Landscape design on Long Island
-Intersection of domestic architecture and landscape design
-Adaptations of private residential gardens into public sites
-Historical positioning of the similarities and differences between Olmsted Sr. and Olmsted Brothers landscape designs and theories
-Issues of sustainability in the preservation and restoration of historic designed landscapes
-Theoretical methodologies and decision-making models for recapturing and sustaining historic landscapes
Please send a one-page abstract, CV, and bio to research@plantingfields.org by September 1, 2021. Submissions will be reviewed by a committee of external individuals. Notifications will be made by December 1, 2021.
About Planting Fields Foundation:
Planting Fields Foundation strives to preserve and make relevant to all audiences the heritage of Planting Fields, an early 20th-century 409-acre estate, designed as an integrated component of the built and natural world. Learn more at www.plantingfields.org.
