Professor Emeritus James Corner, the renowned landscape architect and urban designer who is founder and CEO at James Corner Field Operations, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The honor is widely considered the highest form of recognition of artistic merit in the United States.
“Jim has been a major force in both design theory and landscape architecture practice, and his teaching at Penn was central to that,” says Fritz Steiner, dean and Paley Professor at the Weitzman School of Design.
Corner is one of just 29 newly elected members for 2021—along with Barbara Kingsolver, Wynton Marsalis, and Faith Ringgold—and one of only six architects. Membership in the Academy is limited to 300 architects, visual artists, composers, and writers who are elected for life by vote of the existing membership and pay no dues.
Since earning his Master of Landscape Architecture degree at Penn in 1986, Corner has devoted the past 30-plus years to advancing the field of landscape architecture and urbanism, primarily through his leadership on high-visibility, complex urban projects around the world, as well as through teaching, public speaking, and writing. At Penn, he has served on the faculty in the Department of Landscape Architecture since 1989, and was the chair from 2000 through 2012.
Read more at Weitzman News.
