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Ben Barsotti Scott

I’m a writer and landscape architect based in New York City. I also curate exhibitions, primarily through a collaborative project called Bad Little Brother. And I’m a student of historical geography, currently researching a series of civilian-led blockades of US Navy terminals in the final years of the Vietnam War.

Occasionally, I’m  also a teacher and critic at schools of art and architecture: see the syllabus for my 2022 undergraduate course on contemporary architectural criticism here. Even more occasionally, I write for architecture and urban geography publications like the the New York Review of Architecture, Critical Planning Journal, and Journal of Landscape Architecture.

You can see my full CV here and you can contact me here.

Ben Barsotti Scott
urban historical geographer and independent curator in New York, NY.

See some of my recent work below. You can contact me here.
EXHIBITION
“Yes, It Can Be Done!”
2016
Between 1950 and 1980, the US National Park Service added 168 park units to its system. This remarkable expansion included the reimagining of the role of NPS in urban and suburban areas. The 1962 establishment of the National Capital Region, under NPS management, reflects an increasing investment in suburban and regional-scale parks. Similarly, this period saw a reassessment of programming and management of Washington DC’s parks, as National Capital Parks sought to better serve Washington’s Black population. The exhibition Yes, it can be done! charted this moment of tumult and optimism through three case studies: Anacostia Park, in Southeast Washington, DC; Greenbelt Park, in Greenbelt, Maryland; and Grant Village, in Yellowstone National Park. Together these parks form a picture of shifting attitudes towards conservation and visitor engagement in the mid-twentieth century United States.

This was the first exhibition of works from the Benjamin C. Howland papers, which were donated to the University of Virginia in 2016. I was the exhibition designer and curator. The previous summer I spearheaded the effort to document all materials in the collection before their donation to the Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia.