In Remembrance: Elizabeth Burns Gamard ’84MArch Died on June 26 2017

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Elizabeth Burns Gamard died unexpectedly of natural causes on June 26, 2017, at her home in New Lebanon, New York. She was 58.

Elizabeth is survived by her daughter Sarah Gamard, sister Maryjoyce Burns, and brothers John Keenan Burns Jr. and Christopher Burns. She is preceded in death by her mother, Betty Lorraine Yates Burns, and her father, John Keenan Burns Sr.

Elizabeth was born on October 4, 1958, in Meriden, Connecticut. She spent much of her early life in Chatham, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Massachusetts–Amherst in 1981 with a bachelor of fine arts degree. She then earned a master of architecture degree from Yale University in 1984. Elizabeth has been the recipient of numerous grants, teaching awards, and fellowships throughout her long and accomplished career educating in the field of architecture and design, with a pedagogical focus in history, theory, criticism, and thesis direction. She was an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati, the University of Florida at Gainesville, and Rice University, before moving to New Orleans in 1997, where she earned a tenured position at Tulane University, serving as both associate professor and associate dean of the School of Architecture until 2013. She is the author of Kurt Schwitters’s Merzbau, published in 1999, as well as countless articles, lectures, and other written works.

Elizabeth is remembered fondly by family, friends, students, and colleagues alike. She was famous for her brilliance, strength, enthusiasm, generosity, creativity, and passion for academia. She was an unconditionally loving mother, a respected professor and scholar, an artist, rebel, friend, free spirit, true bohemian, poet, and thinker. She was tough and tenacious, the proud daughter of a Navy fighter pilot. She was a devoted fan of Neil Young and loved life in all its strange and abstract forms. She will be dearly missed.

A private memorial service will be held on Cape Cod in Elizabeth’s honor. Details will be announced at a later date through social media. In lieu of flowers, please donate to the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts at www.nocca.com.

—Submitted by the family.