Contact:
James "Ric" Richardson; (505) 277-2903
Chris Burroughs; (505) 277-1816 / [email protected]
March 5, 1997
CULTURAL LANDSCAPE HISTORIAN LEAVES UNM SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND PLANNING MAJOR GIFT
The dreams of cultural landscape historian John Brinckerhoff (J.B.) Jackson will live on at the University of New Mexico School of Architecture and
Planning through a major bequest recently announced by the Jackson Trust.
The gift is the largest in the school's history and among the largest ever
made to the University as a whole. Jackson was a very private person during
his lifetime, and therefore, trust overseers are unable to reveal the exact
amount of the bequest.
Jackson, described last April by the New York Times as "America's
greatest living writer on the cultural forces that have shaped the land this
nation occupies," died in August at the age of 86, making UNM the residuary
beneficiary.
"This is the most significant gift ever made to the School of Architecture
and Planning. We are immensely proud that Jackson, who is world famous for
his idealism , original thinking and insightful writing, selected UNM as his
beneficiary," said President Richard E. Peck.
Jackson, who lived in a flat-roofed adobe villa he designed and built in
the mid 1960s in La Cienega, N.M., was best known as the founder and editor
of the journal "Landscape" where he laid the groundwork for a new way of
looking at American landscape.
For nearly 50 years he traveled the nation, surveying the landscape and
noting the changes made by humans. For Jackson, front lawns and strip malls
cried out for interpretation and an analysis of the political and cultural
forces that shaped them.
He was born in France and grew up in Washington D.C. and New York,
attending private schools in Europe and the United States. After earning a
bachelor's degree in history at Harvard University in 1932, he briefly
studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and then
served as a field intelligence officer during the Second World War.
After he left the magazine in the late 1960s, he taught at the University
of California at Berkeley and Harvard's School of Design for nearly two
decades, traveling back and forth between the two schools frequently on his
motorcycle on solo journeys.
He first became acquainted with New Mexico as a boy when he would visit his
uncle, a Wall Street lawyer who owned a ranch in the northeastern part of
the state. After he moved to La Cienega, he became known at the University
of New Mexico as a guest lecturer. He founded several scholarships for the
architecture and planning programs. Several years ago he gave a stirring
speech at the School of Architecture and Planning's commencement ceremony
where he urged the new graduates to consider designing the "minimal house,
instead of the maximum."
"Over the years Jackson has been a friend of the School of Architecture and
Planning. We will miss his visits and his fresh way of viewing landscape
architecture, but we will strive to make sure his dreams live on through his
gift," said James "Ric" Richardson, interim dean.
Karen Stone, UNM Foundation President, called Jackson's gift a "wonderful
vote of confidence in School of Architecture and Planning."
"I wish we had the opportunity to thank him appropriately for the legacy
he leaves to the University. It is now our responsibility to steward this
legacy," she said.
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