A Richmond judge and a landscape architect were selected Friday as the recipients of the Thomas Jefferson Medals, a pair of awards that honor prominent figures in law and architecture each year.
The Thomas Jefferson Foundation and the University selected J. Harvie Wilkinson, III, former Chief Judge of the Richmond U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and Peter Walker, the winner of the design competition for the World Trade Center memorial.
The University co-sponsors the annual awards with the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, a private, nonprofit organization that operates and owns Monticello.
"Monticello and the University are close partners on many fronts because they are two of Jefferson's greatest legacies," Foundation President Daniel Jordan said.
The recipients are chosen for having made extraordinary contributions in two professions closely aligned with Jefferson's lifelong commitment to architecture and law, Jordan said. These medals are the highest outside honors given by the University, which does not award honorary degrees.
University President John T. Casteen, III said the medals are awarded to persons whose work extends over the larger part of a lifetime.
"Recipients have made major contributions to architecture and to the law -- persons at the top of their professions," Casteen said. "These contributions have to be transformational."
The Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture has been awarded annually since 1966 to prestigious architects such as Mies van der Rohe, I.M. Pei, Philip Johnson and Frank Gehry. The Medal in Law has been awarded each year since 1977, and has gone to such figures as Lewis F. Powell Jr., Marian Wright Edelman and William H. Rehnquist.
The awards will be presented to Wilkinson and Walker in the Rotunda on April 13, the 261st anniversary of Jefferson's birth. As part of founder's day events, medal recipients typically give public lectures at the University, which Jordan said will provide students with "the opportunity to hear from two extraordinary people."
Though Wilkinson is a graduate of the University Law School, Jordan said it is not necessary for recipients to have ties to the University.
"Recipients are chosen on a global basis. They have come from all over the world," he said.
Wilkinson did his undergraduate work at Yale University and received a law degree from U.Va. in 1972. He served as clerk for Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., was a law professor at the University in 1983 and was the editor of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot Editorial page from 1978-1981. In 1984 he was appointed circuit judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and served as chief judge from 1996 to 2003.
Law Prof. Robert O'Neil praised Wilkinson, who once also served on the University Board of Visitors, for his particular knowledge of the academic community.
"Several of his opinions reflect a special understanding of academic values and academic freedom," O'Neil said. "I think virtually everyone at the Law School knows him and admires him as an outstanding judge."
Noting that most recipients of the medals are from out of town, O'Neil added, "It's nice on this occasion to have someone who is a close neighbor."
Walker studied landscape architecture at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Illinois and at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. In 1983 he founded Peter Walker and Partners, Landscape Architecture, Inc., which focuses largely on parks and educational campuses. His latest projects have included the Sydney Millennium Park for the 2000 Olympics and the Sony Center in Berlin.
Walker has also served as chair of the landscape architecture departments at the University of California at Berkeley and at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
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