Biographies of the Speakers

Abe Jasinowski
Is a graduate of the Cooper Union School of Architecture, and practitioner and teacher of the Chinese yoga and martial arts system Wu Mei (Plum blossom) Kung Fu. While working at Gensler architects, he designed interior rock gardens for several company clients. His thesis at Cooper Union was inspired by the "emma and omikuji" healing rituals used by Japanese visitors to temples, shrines and gardens. His experience with the Japanese culture comes from living and studying in Japan.

Julie Moir Messervy
Is a garden designer, author, and principal of Messervy Associates in Wellesley, MA. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Wellesley College and attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's School of Architecture where she received her Master of Architecture and Master in City Planning degrees. She trained with the eminent Japanese garden master Kinsaku Nakane in Kyoto, Japan, first as a Henry Luce Scholar, and later as a Japan Foundation Fellow. Her latest book is called "The Inward Garden."

Stephen Morrell
Is a graduate of the N.Y. Botanical Garden School of Horticulture and holds the North American Diploma in Horticulture from the American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta. His experience with the Japanese culture comes from independent study tours in Japan as well as from his practice of Zen Buddhism and the tea ceremony. He has designed Japanese inspired gardens for both private clients and as public gardens. For the past twenty-two years he has been curator of the Humes Japanese Stroll Garden in Mill Neck N.Y.

Constance Old
Is a graduate of Stanford University in Botany and Aesthetics, and studied Landscape Architecture at the University of California. She established the Education Program at the Strybing Arboretum at the Golden Gate Park. She is a founder and administrator of the Performing Arts Index at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is a visiting scholar at the CUNY Graduate Center Music Department.

Elizabeth Barlow Rogers
Is a 2002 AIA Heritage Ball honoree, the founding President of the Central Park Conservancy and of the Cityscape Institute, the Director of the Bard Graduate Center's new program on Garden History and Landscape Studies. She trained in art history and city planning, and is internationally recognized for her leadership in revitalizing public parks and gardens. Her latest book is called "Landscape Design. A cultural and architectural history."

James Malloch Taylor
Is a graduate of the architecture program at Edinburgh University. His areas of study have ranged from Venice and Italian hill towns to 20th Century houses in Los Angeles. Under the Cassone Project, he continues research into the possibilities for architecture founded on allegory. He currently works in New York for Peter Pennoyer Architects P.C.

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More about ARC
including membership information

From time to time the Board of Directors elects as Fellows individuals it identifies as having made a distinguished contribution to their respective fields. The list of Fellows elected over a period of nearly four decades thus exemplifies what the Society understands as the necessary and vital connections between art, religion and culture.

ARC Fellows

PROGRAM ARCHIVE

Fall 2002
Drawing on the Human Spirit

Spring 2002
MoMA's PAPA:
Alfred Barr and
the Religious Dimension of Modernism

Winter 2002
A Theology of Beauty

Fall 2001
Lifting the Veil

May 2001
Utopia/Dystopia

February 2001
Antigone
Performance and Symposium

November 2000
Illuminations & Transformations:
Cross-Cultural Spiritual Dynamics 
in Music, Text, Dance and Film

May 2000
Alternative Readings: 
Sacred Text Embodied in Visual Art

February 2000
The Meaning of Myth

November 1999
Myth, Ritual and the Mediation of Violence

May, 1999
Writers' Ways with Loving and Dying

February, 1999 
The Divine Image
Implications for a changing image of God.

October, 1998 
Uneasy Constellations of Meaning
Theological Perceptions and Visual Images in Sixteenth Century Europe &
The Religious Art of Andy Warhol

May, 1998 Meeting
AYNI: The Andean Concept of Reciprocity

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Charles Henderson, Executive Director