Landscapes shape history, and ground our memories in place. Landscape-based memorials bring us into their narratives with empathy and care.

A memorial exhibit with hanging metal plaques and large yellow text giving event details, including name of speaker, university, date, time, and location.

For more than a decade I have been working with memorials, first on the landscape team for the Collier Memorial at MIT and later through travel, photography, and writing. This work has taught me to see history as both figure and ground, and that place matters both in the forming and telling of cultural remembrance. My writing and publications are inspired by conversations in the arts and by the battle over history in national politics, and champion landscape as a space for conversation and connection.

The Collier Memorial

The Collier Memorial
Frontlines of Care

Frontlines of Care
American Memorial, Pt. I: Landscapes of Exclusion

American Memorial, Pt. I: Landscapes of Exclusion
Documenting Stolpersteine

Documenting Stolpersteine
Stone wall with brick ledge and a green forest in the background.
A clear blue sky with some wispy clouds, green bushes, and trees on the horizon, and a dirt ground in the foreground.
A dense forest scene with green leaves and tall trees, sunlight filtering through the canopy, with grass and underbrush at the forest floor.
Outdoor sculpture by Hank Willis Thomas featuring multiple human arms and heads protruding from a concrete base, with a modern building and blue sky with clouds in the background.
A white memorial obelisk with black Japanese characters, surrounded by rocks and flowers, at Manzanar National Historic Site in a vast desert landscape with mountains in the background under a clear blue sky.
Purple and lavender origami cranes hanging in a vertical string decoration, positioned in front of a stone wall and gravel ground, with wooden and greenery background at the Japanese American Exclusion Memorial
A person walking among concrete slabs at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, Germany, with a blue sky and green trees in the background.
Cut trees memorializing a Holocaust mass grave site within a forest scene with tall green trees and blue sky.
A forest scene with numerous tall trees, some with white-painted trunks representing concentration camp prisoners, under a clear blue sky. The forest floor is covered with green plants, moss, and patches of sunlight.
Cobblestone street with small plants growing between the stones. A commemorative plaque is embedded in the cobblestones, partially visible, with German and English text, mentioning the name Käthe Simonsohn, born in 1891, deported in 1942 from Auschwi
Bronze shoes lined up along the Danube River, memorializing those killed by Nazis
A pair of black leather combat boots and a worn-out brown boot placed on a concrete surface near a body of water, with several candle tins scattered around them.
Multiple large rocks placed on a concrete surface in front of a concrete wall with shadows cast across the ground.
Outdoor memorial park with vertical metal slabs, trees, and a clear blue sky.
A park scene with green trees, a pathway, and a memorial banner that reads 'Memorial to Enslaved Laborers' hanging from a lamppost.
A metal sign for the Blue Star Memorial Highway, with a gold star in the center and a decorative top featuring a crest of the National Council of State Garden Clubs. The sign is situated in a park with trees, a person sitting on a bench, and a parkin

Writing