July 31, 2007 -- The University of Virginia School of Architecture has named landscape historian Ethan Carr to serve as associate professor of landscape architecture. The appointment, announced by Architecture School dean Karen Van Lengen, will begin this fall.

Carr is a nationally recognized landscape architecture historian and preservationist specializing in the public landscape of the United States. He has redefined the scholarship on American national parks and modern landscape design through his two books, "Wilderness by Design" (1998, University of Nebraska Press), which won an American Society of Landscape Architects honor award, and "Mission 66: Modernism and the National Park Dilemma" (2007 University of Massachusetts Press in association with the Library of American Landscape History). He currently teaches history of landscape architecture, seminars in cultural landscape studies and design studios at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is editing the eighth volume of the Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, the 19th-century American landscape architect who created New York City's Central Park and other urban parks throughout the United States.
 
Carr earned a Ph.D. from the Edinburgh College of Art, received a master’s in landscape architecture from Harvard University, and both master’s and bachelor’s degrees in art history from Columbia University.  

What others are saying about Ethan Carr:

Karen Van Lengen, dean of U.Va.’s School of Architecture: “Ethan's devotion and expertise in the history of American landscape architecture is exemplary and will add a significant dimension to not only our programs in the Architecture School, but to American Studies at U.Va. as well. We are so pleased that he has decided to join our faculty and school.”

Elizabeth Meyer, associate professor and former director of the Program in Landscape Architecture:  “Ethan Carr is an accomplished teacher and an award-winning author whose scholarship focuses on the public landscape of municipal and national parks. His teaching will afford future generations of landscape architecture students more than a sequence of history courses that introduces them to the early traditions of the field and the emergence of the profession in the 19th and early 20th centuries. His courses will also challenge them to rethink the interconnections between modernity, technology and landscape, as well as the role of public, not only private, practice in that history.

“We are excited that Carr will also offer seminars on Cultural Landscape Preservation, building on his experiences as a landscape historian and preservationist in the National Park Service, that promise to attract students from the School of Architecture and across the University community in American Studies, Environmental Thought and Practice, and anthropology.

“Carr will continue editing Volume 8 of the Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, which covers theperiod during which most of the Boston park system was designed. We anticipate several ways that students will be able to engage this work through seminars as well as through research assistantships.”