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PANEL EXHIBITION OPENS IN NEW VENUE

Wednesday, September 10, 2014 | Posted by lalh

A Genius for Place on display at the Jones Library in Amherst, Mass. Photos by Jessica Dawson.

The LALH panel exhibition, A Genius for Place, opened at the Jones Library in Amherst, Massachusetts, in early September. About sixty people turned out for the opening public reception organized and hosted by the library staff. A brief program featured remarks by Executive Director Robin Karson. Joanna Ballantine of The Trustees of Reservations followed with an update on the restoration of the landscape at Naumkeag, one of seven Country Place-era estates profiled in the exhibition. The Trustees, the brainchild of landscape architect Charles Eliot (1859–1897), is a nonprofit historic preservation and conservation organization that owns and maintains Naumkeag and more than a hundred other properties in Massachusetts.

Robin Karson introduces the film Fletcher Steele and Naumkeag: A Playground of the Imagination.

Without such scholarly works as the exhibition, the accompanying book of the same title, and Fletcher Steele, Landscape Architect, said Ballantine, it is hard to convey the value of such design masterpieces to the public, much less raise funds to restore them. The event closed with a screening of the LALH film Fletcher Steele and Naumkeag: A Playground of the Imagination.

Joanna Ballantine of The Trustees of Reservations delivers an update on the restoration of the landscape at Naumkeag.

In October, A Genius for Place will travel to the Forbes Library in Northampton, Massachusetts, where it will remain on display through the week before Thanksgiving. To reserve or learn more about the exhibition, email Jane Roy Brown, LALH director of educational outreach, at jroybrown@lalh.org.