"A Look at the Women in the Etchings of Frank A. Waugh," a Zube Lecture Presented by Annaliese Bischoff

Please join the UMass Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning for "A Look at the Women in the Etchings of Frank A. Waugh," a Zube Lecture presented by LARP Professor Emerita Annaliese Bischoff on Thursday, September 19th at 4pm in the Design Building Lecture Hall (DB 170).

In the twentieth century Frank A. Waugh was one of the most influential writers and advocates for horticulture, landscape design, and conservation, though he is not well known today. He wanted people to see beauty in the common places around them, beginning with the trees. Late in life he took up etching so he could represent trees in his penultimate book to popularize tree appreciation for everyone- men, women and children. In these etchings, beyond the trees, he represented three little known women who factored into his life- his wife, his eldest daughter and the long-term cleaning lady. Through the window of the etchings, more understanding about all of their important lives can be gleaned.  How Waugh supported them and how they supported Waugh adds a dimension to history to be shared here.  Their historically significant contributions to the larger community will be the focus.

Annaliese Bischoff joined the faculty in 1980 and taught courses in design studio, writing and history. Her research advocated creative design exploration. She developed courses on research and grant writing in the arts for the Commonwealth Honors College (CHC) where she taught a senior thesis course on sustainable art before retiring in 2015. She continues to teach part-time for CHC. During her 40 year career Professor Bischoff received several national and regional awards, including a senior research Fulbright grant. She served as the President of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) and the President of the Design Communication Association (DCA).

For the past decade Annaliese Bischoff has been collecting drawings and etchings of trees by Frank A. Waugh, who founded the department in 1903. Trees remained central to Waugh’s professional work. Near the end of his life, he was working on a book that would feature his beautiful etchings of trees alongside his ink drawings. He never finished this last work because of his death in 1943. Her book, The Man Who Loved Trees (Koehler, 1924) tells this story.

https://works.bepress.com/annaliese_bischoff/

Photo: Cotswold Corner, 1939, etching by Frank A. Waugh