While the Foundation for Landscape Studies no longer operates as an independent not-for-profit organization, its legacy is being furthered by the University of Virginia’s Landscape Studies Initiative (LSI), a new program within the School of Architecture’s Center for Cultural Landscapes. The multidisciplinary program will be freely available online and is based on Landscape Design: A Cultural and Architectural History by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, which has served as the primary text for landscape studies courses for the past twenty years.

Although the publication of SiteLines has ceased, online copies of each of its biannual issues (Fall 2003 to Spring 2021) will remain on this website as well as on that of the Center for Cultural Landscapes.

On our Publications page, you will note the titles of the seven books that we have produced. Among these are the catalogs that accompanied the two exhibitions we sponsored and co-curated with the Morgan Library & Museum: Romantic Gardens: Nature, Art, and Landscape Design (2010) and City of the Soul: Rome and the Romantics (2016). For a further appreciation of the contributions of the Foundation for Landscape Studies to the visual arts, visit our Gallery and view online exhibitions by seven notable photographers of place.

The Awards page profiles the contributions made to the intellectual vitality of garden history and landscape studies by the authors of the sixty-nine books that have received the John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prizes and the winners of the forty-four David R. Coffin Publication Grants. Publishers and authors will be happy to know that the LSI will continue the annual David Coffin Publication Grants and John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prizes through a successor Book Awards Committee that will have the same members as the current committee.

We particularly recommend that you go to the Organization page, where you will find biographies of our board members. They include those of our primary policy and financial advisors – chairman Frederic Rich and treasurer Nancy Newcomb – and ten other organizational directors who have helped to run the Foundation for Landscape Studies since its inception in 2005.

The dedicated service of the three permanent members of the Awards Committee – Therese O’Malley, Reuben Rainey, and Kenneth Helphand – has significantly furthered the field of landscape studies. The success of our Place Maker / Place Keeper Awards benefits can be credited in large part to the advice and hard work of Antonia Adezio, Robin Karson, and Margaret Sullivan.

Board congeniality and onsite landscape history education have been facilitated by Vincent Buonanno and Scott Burns, who hosted an insiders’ board tour of the great gardens and Gilded Age mansions of Newport and Providence, Rhode Island.

The eminent landscape architect and sketchbook artist Laurie Olin has contributed numerous illustrated essays to SiteLines. As co-curator of the exhibition sponsored by the FLS at the Morgan Library & Museum in 2016, Princeton architectural history professor emeritus John Pinto offered his expertise in rare books, prints, and photographs relating to ancient and Renaissance Rome.

Without the support of this actively engaged board of directors, we would not have earned our current reputation as a nexus of gardeners, landscape architects, historic preservationists, scholars, and writers who are involved with making and protecting landscapes and learning and teaching about landscape as place. And, without the faithful support of friends like you, none of this would have been possible.

The Foundation is currently undergoing the formal legal process of dissolution. When all required approvals are obtained, the remaining assets of the Foundation – including all gifts received prior to formal dissolution – will be transferred to UVA's School of Architecture Foundation (a not-for-profit entity) as restricted contributions to the Elizabeth Barlow Rogers Landscape Studies Initiatives Fund (which supports the Landscape Studies Initiative) and/or a fund dedicated to continuing the Foundation’s John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize and David R. Coffin Publication Grants (which will continue to be awarded by an independent committee). We are grateful to all those FLS supporters who support our legacy by making a celebratory graduation donation to the Foundation for this purpose.

The Foundation for Landscape Studies is currently undergoing the legal process for its de-incorporation. When all mandated approvals are obtained, its remaining assets, including all gifts received prior to its formal dissolution, will be transferred to UVA’s School of Architecture Foundation, the not-for-profit entity responsible for the operational and programmatic costs of the LSI. These assets will constitute a donor-restricted gift, to be allocated by the Foundation for Landscape Studies either to the Elizabeth Barlow Rogers Fund, which provides general support for the Landscape Studies Initiative, and/or the Awards Fund formed to perpetuate the John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize and David R. Coffin Publication Grants previously awarded by the FLS. The recipients of these awards will continue to be selected by an independent committee of scholars.

We are grateful to all past and present supporters whose donation upon this auspicious occasion will augment the fruits of the Foundation for Landscape Studies legacy by extending its influence into the future.