John Beardsley

Abstract

In the past several decades, the historical duality between nature and culture has eroded: nature is now seen as inextricably bound up with culture, for better and for worse. This has had profound implications for land management, especially landscape conservation and preservation. Rather than seeing conserved and preserved lands as “wild,” independent of human thought and action, current ideas suggest that biodiversity preservation and restoration are more effectively pursued with a full awareness of the cultural values ascribed to plants, animals, and ecosystems by their human inhabitants. The new approach is often called biocultural conservation. This talk will present an overview of the subject, explore its historical roots and its current manifestations—particularly its connections to indigenous cultures. This will frame a group discussion of both conceptual and practical applications of biocultural conservation across several professional disciplines.

Biography

Author, curator and educator, John Beardsley trained as an art historian, earning an A.B. from Harvard and a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. Beardsley has taught in the departments of landscape architecture at the University of Virginia, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University, where he was an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Design from 1998 to 2013, teaching courses in landscape architectural history, theory, research, and writing. From 2008-19, he was he was Director of Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C., and from 2019 to 2024, he was curator of the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Prize in Landscape Architecture for the Cultural Landscape Foundation. He is the author of numerous books on contemporary art and design, including James Castle Memory Palace (2021), Earthworks and Beyond: Contemporary Art in the Landscape (fourth edition, 2006), and Gardens of Revelation: Environments by Visionary Artists (1995), as well as many titles on recent landscape architecture. Among his exhibitions are “Black Folk Art in America” (Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1982); “Hispanic Art in the United States” (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1987), both with Jane Livingston; and "The Quilts of Gee's Bend" (Museum of Fine Arts Houston, 2002), with Jane Livingston and Alvia Wardlaw.