While the theme of a new photo exhibit in New York highlighting Modern landscape-design icons leans back to the mid-20th-century, an aspect of the show's medium is au courant: "Marvels of Modernism" can also be viewed in the comforting glow of your personal-computer screen.

The exhibition of 27 landscape images by 10 of the country's top contemporary and landscape photographers is staged through Jan. 4 in the bricks-and-mortar gallery at the George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester. If  upstate New York is not on your flight plan, click into the edited online version at tclf.org, website of museum partner and Marvels-program parent, The Cultural Landscape Foundation.

The photos are of a dozen post-World War II landscape designs described as influential in the American Modernism movement and flagged by TCLF as "at-risk," or threatened by development, neglect or ill-advised alteration. The marvels include the 1960 Kaiser Roof Garden in Oakland, California, designed by Osmundson & Staley and photographed for the exhibition by Debra Bloomfield, and the 1957 Miller Garden in Columbus, Indiana, considered Dan Kiley's masterwork and photographed by Tyagan Miller.

The foundation - along with the museum, Garden Design magazine, Design Within Reach and other sponsors -  organized the show and a whirlwind of correlating events in order to raise awareness about what experts say are innovative but underappreciated  historical landscapes. The groundbreaking Marvels sites encapsulate the design hallmarks of the futuristic-minded era: Think boomerang curves, animated fountains, kidney-shaped pools, geometric earthworks and sunken plazas.

"Many of these places are invisible and slide under the radar," says Charles Birnbaum, TCLF's founder and president. "For example, very few Pittsburghers knew that [Marvel site photographed by Heather F. Wetzel] Lake Elizabeth in Allegheny Commons on the city's north side was designed by John Simonds, the same celebrated designer as the much-beloved Mellon Park downtown."

To help spread the word about the show and the fragile sites themselves, public receptions have been planned at Design Within Reach studios across the country, including two on Dec. 4 (in Minneapolis and Seattle), one on Dec. 10 in San Francisco and one on Feb. 5 in Southlake, Texas.

The party held last month at the Design Within Reach studio in downtown Chicago capped off an action-packed two-day "The Second Wave of Modernism in Landscape Architecture in America" conference, which included discussions among some of today's leading practitioners on what makes "modern" and how contemporary landscape architecture is influenced by the preceding generation. There were also walking tours of the Illinois Institute of Technology campus and at Millennium Park, considered a mecca for enthusiasts of today's Modernism.

TCLF, the country's only nonprofit foundation dedicated to saving cultural landscapes, pulled together its Marvels of Modernism site list as part of the group's annual Landslide program to spotlight America's important endangered gardens and landscapes. The themed site list is intended to "teach people about the power of place," says Birnbaum, while the tie-in exhibition is a way to "teach people how to see and interpret these places," he says.

Once determined, the sites were photographed by 10 artists selected by curators Alison Nordstr"m and Jessica Johnston at George Eastman House, which is considered the world's pre-eminent photography museum. "By selecting regional artists, we are forced to view these sites anew and strip away emotional baggage that we often bring to places," Birnbaum explains.

Other "modern marvels"  include Boston City Hall Plaza, designed in the early1960s by Kallmann, McKinell & Knowles and photographed by Sam Sweezy (and a place Birnbaum noted as one where "folks feel very strongly about their likes and dislikes"); San Francisco's Parkmerced, designed in the 1940s by Thomas Church with Robert Royston and shot by Tom Fox; and Minneapolis' Peavey Plaza, designed in the 1960s by M. Paul Friedberg and photographed for the exhibit by Keri Pickett.

To download the show's Gallery Guide, or for a complete listing of sites, exhibition information and sponsors, see tclf.org. More information can also be found at eastmanhouse.org and dwr.com.

Meanwhile, TCLF has put out its call for nominations for next year's Landslide, which will cover "Shapers of the American Landscape" and is intended to focus on threatened great American public gardens, although at-risk private gardens will also be considered. See the foundation website to learn more.