Established in 2010 by anonymous donors, the John Dixon Hunt Fund honors Professor Emeritus, John Dixon Hunt, and supports acquisitions in the field of Landscape Architecture.
Professor Hunt joined Penn’s faculty at the School of Design in 1994 and served as Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture through June 2000. He is the author of numerous articles and books on garden history and theory, including a catalog of the landscape drawings of William Kent, Garden and Grove, Gardens and the Picturesque, The Picturesque Garden in Europe (2002), and The Afterlife of Gardens (2004). He edits two journals, Word & Image and Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes. Current interests focus upon landscape architectural theory, the development of garden design in the city of Venice, modern(ist) garden design, and ekphrasis. He is the inaugural series editor of the Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture (University of Pennsylvania Press), in which was published his own theoretic study of landscape architecture, Greater Perfections: The Practice of Garden Theory (1999). In May 2000 he was named Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture, and he was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by the Univeristy of Bristol (UK) in 2006.
In the words of the anonymous donors, “Dr. Hunt is a professor of incomparable integrity, who, through his dedication to teaching and scholarship, sets a high standard for both his students and his peers. It is only fitting that Penn should honor him for his contributions to the University and his field.”