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Landscape Architecture’s History: Marrying Research and Teaching through the Camera’s Eye
2008-02-01 – 2008-08-15
During the course of her academic career, Professor Mirka Beneš has documented a wide range of landscapes and supporting materials such as rare prints, maps, drawings, and written documents. From Professor Beneš’s extensive slide collection, a group of almost 8,000 teaching slides—used in support of her two lecture courses in the history and theories of landscape architecture—were selected and, over the past 16 months, in collaboration with Professor Beneš, the slides have been cataloged and digitized by the School of Architecture’s Visual Resources Collection (VRC). The selection of images in this exhibit represent a small sampling of images selected from the group of almost 8,000 that are, due to the generosity of Professor Beneš, available for use by the university community as part of the VRC’s online Image Collection.
Mirka Beneš is Associate Professor in the School of Architecture, The University of Texas at Austin, which she joined in 2006. Her teaching covers the whole history of landscape architecture and gardens, and she publishes on Baroque Rome, Italian and French gardens, agrarian landscapes, and modernist landscape architecture. From 1988 to 2005, she taught at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, latterly as Associate Professor.
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Women Bathing in a Garden Pool
Mughal Indian Minature, ca. 1650. Source: Sotheby 2003 Auction Catalog.
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Necropolis with Pyramids
Gizeh, Egypt, 1500 BCE. Source: Visual Resources, Francis Loeb Library, Harvard Graduate School of Design.
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Treptow Housing Plan with gardens and green spaces
By Hermann Jansen, 1914. Source: Hermann Jansen, Bebauungsplan für Treptow (Berlin: Ernst Wasmuth, 1914).
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Fresco of Rome by Danti
16th century. Source: Vatican Cartographic Gallery postcard.
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Appennine Colossus Statue
Villa Medici, Pratolino, Italy, 1581. Source: Marco Dezzi Bardeschi, ed., Il Ritorno di Pan, (Florence: Alinea, 1985).
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Bird’s Eye View of the Palace and Gardens at Versailles
By Pierre Patel, 1668. Source: postcard.
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Central Park
John Bachman, 1863. Source: New York Historical Society.
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Sheep Grazing Among Strollers in the Park
Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York, 1866-1873. Source: Visual Resources, Francis Loeb Library, Harvard Graduate School of Design.
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Two versions of a house with garden for himself at Werder, Germany
By Mies van der Rohe, 1914. Source: Philip C. Johnson, Mies Van der Rohe, (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1947).
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Palazzo Piccolomini
Mirka Beneš
Pienza, Italy, 1460.
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Villa Malaparte
Mirka Beneš
Capri, Italy, 1930.
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Naumkeagh Estate and Garden
Mirka Beneš
Stockbridge, Mass., 1930s.
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Stourhead
Mirka Beneš
Wiltshire, England, 1741-1765.
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Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Mirka Beneš
Washington, D.C., 1981.
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Dumbarton Oaks Garden
Mirka Beneš
Washington, D.C., 1921-47.