The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens, opening in spring 2008, will be the first gallery in the world dedicated to botanical art and open to the public all year round. The gallery, designed by award-winning architects Walters and Cohen, will exhibit precious works of art from the collections of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Dr Shirley Sherwood, many of which have never been on public display before.
The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew holds one of the world's greatest collections of botanical art, totalling over 200,000 items. Kew holds works by masters of botanical art such as G.D. Ehret, the Bauer Brothers and Redouté, together with nineteenth century artists such as Walter Hood Fitch, who was one of the most prolific botanical artists ever. Dr Shirley Sherwood holds one of the world's most comprehensive collections of original contemporary botanical art from over 200 artists. The new building will be linked with the nearby Marianne North Gallery, a permanent display of Victorian botanical and landscape paintings. The Link Gallery between the two buildings will always have a selection of contemporary works from the Shirley Sherwood Collection.
Many of the works in Kew 's collection require a climate-controlled environment with managed light levels. Until now, although the collection has been consulted by experts and researchers, most of the works have been kept in study collections behind the scenes. The new gallery will provide the right environment and will make Kew's collections more accessible, ensuring that the 1.3 million annual visitors to Kew Gardens can see the treasures on public display.
Dr Sherwood travels extensively and has been collecting contemporary botanical art since 1990. Her comprehensive collection includes work by artists living in thirty different countries and documents the emergence of a new wave of botanical painters and the renaissance of their art form. Arguably the most important private collection of twentieth century botanical art in the world, these art works complement Kew's own collection which has a rich heritage of eighteenth and nineteenth century illustrations as well as more recent acquisitions.
Kew's collection of botanical art includes illustrations of extinct species for which the artwork may be the only surviving record. As well as being great works of art, these historically rich illustrations are scientific tools highly valued by taxonomists, horticulturalists, and researchers alike. With one quarter of the world's species of flowering plants threatened by extinction in the next 50 years, Kew has a vital role to play to inspire and deliver science-based plant conservation. The beauty, rarity and accuracy of the images displayed in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery will raise public awareness of the beauty and fragility of the natural world.
Following the opening of the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, the Marianne North Gallery, both the building and its collections, are due to be restored and enhanced through improved interpretation, better signage and a programme of activities. This work is the subject of an application to the Heritage Lottery Fund. This beautiful space is filled floor to ceiling with a lavish collection of 832 colourful paintings by Marianne North, a Victorian amateur botanical artist, who travelled the world and left her collection to Kew. Behind the scenes, an extension to the Herbarium, Library and Archives, opening in 2009, will provide improved facilities for consulting Kew's illustrations collection. -- www.kew.org
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