Dan Kiley Photographic Exhibit to Debut in Pittsburgh, Today

Pittsburgh, PA-The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy announce the opening of The Landscape Architecture Legacy of Dan Kiley organized by The Cultural Landscape Foundation and featuring specially commissioned photographs of significant landscapes across the nation and abroad. The exhibition is on view November 7-December 31, 2014, at the Trust's 937 Gallery. An opening reception takes place Friday, November 7, 2014, from 5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., with a short program at 6:00 p.m. featuring Remarks by Carol R. Brown, former President of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and Susan Rademacher, Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Curator and author of Mellon Square: Discovering a Modernist Masterpiece.

This traveling photographic exhibition and retrospective features 45 vibrant photographs, which chronicle the current state of 27 of Kiley's more than 1,000 projects worldwide. It was recently bestowed the Award of Excellence in Communications from the American Society of Landscape Architects - the Society's top award in this category. For more information, visit: http://bit.ly/1pDQkEM

"937 Gallery is pleased to present The Landscape Architecture Legacy of Dan Kiley," says Murray Horne, Wood Street Galleries curator. "The work of Dan Kiley has been instrumental in the development and transformation of the Cultural District; the iconic work of this architect has proven forward thinking and successful in its ability to shape culture while simultaneously crafting a national identity for Pittsburgh and achieving a sense of place for the local community."

"This review of Kiley's work is an extraordinary opportunity to compare his Pittsburgh works with that of his contemporary John O. Simonds," said Susan Rademacher, Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Parks Curator. "As peers in the modernist movement, these masters have given our city wonderful places in Kiley's Agnes R. Katz Plaza and Carnegie Museum of Art Sara Scaife Sculpture Court and in Simonds' Mellon Square and Lake Elizabeth in Allegheny Commons. Both landscape architects were keenly commited to giving enriching and vibrant experiences of our city landscape."

About Daniel Urban Kiley
Dan Kiley was one of the most important and influential Modernist landscape architects of the 20th century, and once questioned, "Should not the role of design be to reconnect human beings with their space on their land?" Internationally renowned and fellow landscape architect, Peter Ker Walker shared the following about Kiley's work, "The legacy of Dan Kiley is that his work demonstrates how place informs life and how in turn life gives meaning and value to place. That he has done with art, grace and good humor to the lasting benefit of all."

Internationally, between 1946 and 1968, Kiley produced some of his most iconic projects. In 1946 he was on the winning team with Eero Saarinen for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial competition, known as the St. Louis Arch, and in 1955, again with Saarinen, he designed the garden for J. Irwin Miller's family in Columbus, IN, perhaps the most important Post War garden in the U.S. In 1963 he designed the gigantic approach gardens for Saarinen's Dulles Airport outside Washington, DC. In 1968 Kiley and Walter Netsch of Skidmore Owings and Merrill (SOM) designed the gardens for the new U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO. Kiley also worked with Saarinen's successor firm, Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo Associates, on the Ford Foundation atrium in New York in 1964 and the rooftop gardens at the Oakland Museum of Art in 1969.

Between 1971 and 1986 Kiley partnered with colleagues, operating as Kiley Tyndall Walker for eight years with Ian Tyndall and Peter Ker Walker (both Scotsmen who joined Kiley's practice early on), and as Kiley Walker until 1986 when the firm name returned to the Office of Dan Kiley. In this time of active partnership the firm completed significant projects, including the Dallas Museum of Art and Fountain Place both in Dallas, in the early 1980s; the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; and work abroad, including l'Esplanade du Général de Gaulle at La Défense in Paris, France.

For more information, visit The Cultural Landscape website: http://tclf.org/pioneer/dan-kiley/biography-dan-kiley.

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy
Founded in 1996, the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy is a non-profit organization that works closely with the City of Pittsburgh under an official public-private partnership agreement to restore and improve the city's park system to its full potential. Originally including Highland, Schenley, Frick, and Riverview Parks, the scope of the Park Conservancy's work now includes Schenley Plaza, Cliffside Park, The Frick Environmental Center, and the modernist masterpiece park Mellon Square. To date, the Parks Conservancy has raised over $75 million toward park improvements, completed 14 Capital Projects, stewards over 1,700 acres, and works with thousands of volunteers annually to keep the magnificence, beauty and health of our city parks in top condition for our diverse region to enjoy.

937 Gallery
937 Gallery is a project of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. The multiuse exhibition space is located at 937 Liberty Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh's Cultural District. Gallery Hours for this exhibition will be: Fridays, 11 a.m.-8 p.m.; Saturday, 11 a.m.-8 p.m.; Sunday, 12-5 p.m. The exhibit will close on Wednesday, December 31 and will be open for special hours on that day from 5:30 p.m. -11:00 p.m. The gallery is free and open to the public. For more information about all gallery exhibitions featured in the Cultural District, please visit www.TrustArts.org.

The Cultural Landscape Foundation
The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) is a sixteen-year-old non-profit foundation that provides people with the ability to see, understand and value landscape architecture and its practitioners, in the way many people have learned to do with buildings andtheir designers. Through its web site, lectures, outreach and publishing, TCLF broadens the support and understanding for cultural landscapes nationwide to help safeguard our priceless heritage for future generations. TCLF makes a special effort to heighten the awareness of those who impact cultural landscapes, assist groups and organizations working to increase the appreciation and recognition of cultural landscapes, and develop educational tools for young people to better connect them to their cultural landscape environs. Learn more at www.tclf.org.

Pittsburgh Cultural Trust
The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust has overseen one of Pittsburgh's most historic transformations: turning a seedy red-light district into a magnet destination for arts lovers, residents, visitors, and business owners. Founded in 1984, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust is a non-profit arts organization whose mission is the cultural and economic revitalization of a 14-block arts and entertainment/residential neighborhood called the Cultural District. The District is one of the country's largest land masses "curated" by a single nonprofit arts organization. A major catalytic force in the city, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust is a unique model of how public-private partnerships can reinvent a city with authenticity, innovation and creativity. Using the arts as an economic catalyst, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust has holistically created a world-renowned Cultural District that is revitalizing the city, improving the regional economy and enhancing Pittsburgh's quality of life. Thanks to the support of foundations, corporations, government agencies and thousands of private citizens, the Cultural Trust stands as a national model of urban redevelopment through the arts. For more information, visit TrustArts.org.