At its most recent meeting, the Docomomo US Board of Directors officially welcomed two new members: Jesús (Chuy) Barba Bonilla of Page & Turnbull and Rachel Leibowitz of the Center for Cultural Landscape Preservation at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

Jesús (Chuy) Barba Bonilla was born in Mexico and grew up in Zacatecas, a Spanish colonial mining city declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, which is where he became passionate about history and architecture. Jesús obtained his BA in architecture in 2012 from the Universidad del Valle de Mexico and moved to California in the same year. He is currently pursuing his Master’s degree in Heritage Conservation at the University of Southern California while working as an Architectural Designer in the firm of Page & Turnbull.

Rachel Leibowitz, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse and is a co-director of its Center for Cultural Landscape Preservation. She has taught courses in the history of architecture and landscape architecture at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Rachel’s prior practice in design and in public history includes positions at two Chicago architecture firms; the Historic Preservation Division of the City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development; and the state historic preservation offices of Texas and Illinois. Most recently, Dr. Leibowitz served for five years as the Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer and head of the Preservation Services Division for the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. She has received fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution, the American Council of Learned Societies/Luce Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and the Society of Architectural Historians, among others. Rachel currently serves on the boards of the Alliance for Historic Landscape Preservation, the Preservation Association of Central New York, and the Barry Lopez Foundation for Art + Environment, and she is the book review editor for Buildings & Landscapes, the journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum.