The American Lawn is the fifth and final exhibition in the series The American Century, which seeks to cast a fresh eye on critical aspects of modern America’s architectural culture – its promises and disappointments, its roots and offshoots, its unparalleled worldwide impact. Other exhibitions include Scenes of the World to Come: European Architecture and the American Challenge, 1893–1960 (1995); Frank Lloyd Wright: Designs for an American Landscape, 1922–1932 (1996); Viewing Olmsted: Photographs by Robert Burley, Lee Friedlander, and Geoffrey James (1996); and The Architecture of Reassurance: Designing the Disney Theme Parks (1997). Among the objects and documents displayed in the exhibition are Space Age lawnmowers, lawn ornaments, stereoscopic photographs of the “border crossings” between lawns, excerpts from the cinema of the lawn (such as Blue Velvet), vintage television footage of protests on the Washington Mall, sports shoes with high-tech cleats and patented grass. Photographs in the file include College Station, Texas; Grounds of Mrs. Harold W. Hacks, Short Hills, New Jersey and Weyerhauser Corporate Headquarters. The exhibition ran from June 16 - November 8, 1998 and was curated by Beatriz Colomina, Elizabeth Diller, Alessandra Ponte, Ricardo Scofidio, Georges Teyssot and Mark Wigley with Mark Wasiuta and Gwynne Keathly.

Images in the exhbition featured the attic of the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. Fascinated by sites charged with history, German artist Dieter Appelt uses his examination of the attic to inquire into the invisible, mysterious, and indefinite forces of decay that lie beyond everyday experience. By concentrating on structural details, and by confronting the surfaces of the wooden beams, he has photographed the attic in such a way that it becomes a new reality, marked by the corrosive signs of passing time. Photographs of images in the exhibition: No. 3, 5 and 14 from the sequence Bethanien, 1984-91.