Students in the LSU Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture — named the best landscape architecture program in the nation last year by DesignIntelligence magazine — now have the opportunity to broaden their knowledge in the LSU Student Union Art Gallery. “The Landscape Architecture Legacy of Dan Kiley,” a traveling photographic exhibition, opened in the gallery Friday.
Kiley, who died in 2004, is considered one of the most influential modernist landscape architects of the 20th century, said landscape architecture associate professor Lake Douglas.
The Robert Reich School advocated for the exhibit to come to campus, and the Student Union was more than happy to host it, said LSU Auxiliary Services marketing communications coordinator Heather Gulino.
“There are 45 pieces within the whole exhibit,” Gulino said. “The second you walk by the Art Gallery, there are so many vivid, big pictures that it actually catches your eye very quickly.”
The centennial of Kiley’s birth passed in 2012 without much notice or acknowledgment of the architect’s life and career, Douglas said. But in 2013, The Cultural Landscape Foundation, based in Washington D.C., decided to showcase and commission the contemporary photographs of Kiley’s work.
The exhibition opened in Boston, Massachusetts, and chronicles 27 of more than 1,000 of Kiley’s projects worldwide. The exhibition is set to close in March 2017 in Richmond, Virginia.
“This venue is fabulous,” Douglas said of the Student Union exhibit. “The show looks better here than it did in Boston.” 
Douglas spearheaded the movement to bring Kiley’s exhibit to LSU in 2013 when he attended the annual American Society of Landscape Architects’ meeting in Boston.
“It demonstrates to our students what is possible.” Douglas said, “Our undergraduate landscape program is number one in the country, and so for our students to see something like this, it is a really important thing.”
Landscape architecture senior Jane Satterlee said Kiley often used repetition of geometrical forms to bring a modernist feel to a landscape.
Satterlee, who interned at Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, spent hours studying Kiley’s work in the classroom and said she was excited to hear Douglas helped bring the exhibit to LSU.
“I actually thought about going to visit it in Dallas when it was there,” Satterlee said. “It’s really interesting to see all of these pieces of work together next to each other.”
The LSU Student Union Art Gallery is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. and 12 p.m. until 4 p.m. on Saturdays during home football games.