Brooklyn Botanic Garden Receives NEA Grant

Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) received its first-ever grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to support an important new exhibition: Drawing From Life: Maud H. Purdy and Botanical Art at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, scheduled for exhibit from September 15, 2007 through November 11, 2007.

The $15,000 grant will support the Garden's effort to celebrate and examine 90 years of American women's botanical art by comparing the early-20th-century American artist Maud Purdy, BBG's first and only staff artist (1913-1945), once called "the best botany illustrator in America," with 18 past and present prominent female U.S. botanical artists, most from the BBG Florilegium Society.

Drawing From Life will explore a range of cultural and artistic influences, media, styles, and techniques in botanical art; botanical art's place in art history; and the relationship between botanical art and science. The Maud Purdy Collection includes 235 gouaches, watercolors, pen/inks, sketches, and posters: It is a visual description of BBG's first 30 years, as well as a nearly complete representation of the oeuvre of a heretofore little-recognized 20th-century American artist. The exhibition will feature approximately 50 works: 25 from the Purdy Collection, and 25 by BBG Florilegium artists and others who have drawn from life at BBG.

According to Leslie Findlen, vice president of Development at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, "Botanic gardens are not only collections of living plants-in fact, BBG has a rich legacy of nurturing and inspiring botanical art, beginning with Maud Purdy's extraordinary work and continuing today with the Garden's partnerships with world-class artists. We are thrilled to have support from the NEA for this new exhibition, which highlights the important history of women botanical artists and gives us the opportunity to share aspects of Brooklyn Botanic Garden's permanent art collection with the public." Findlen added. "We are also proud that BBG has received support from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) to help the Garden digitize the Purdy Collection; it also provided a planning grant for this exhibition." (See also www.bbg.org/purdy.)

Since BBG's founding in 1910, women have helped to define BBG as an institution, serving as botanists, educators, and leaders. Brooklyn Botanic Garden was the first U.S. botanic garden to appoint a woman as director. The story of female artists at BBG is key to its history. Starting with Purdy, their work has documented BBG's living collections and helped advance its science and education programs, while contributing to the history of botanical art. Many women botanical artists are members of BBG's Florilegium Society, which was founded in 2000 by Francesca Anderson, Gina Ingoglia, and Elizabeth Scholtz, director emeritus, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and is recognized as the first florilegium in the United States.

The Florilegium Society is dedicated to creating a unique visual record of Brooklyn Botanic Garden's living plant collections. Today, it boasts a 50-member national group that is creating a botanically accurate portrait of BBG's more than 10,000 kinds of plants growing in the Garden. The Florilegium collection, currently comprised of 140 original artworks, is part of the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Library and is housed in the Rare Book Room. Brooklyn Botanic Garden Florilegium artists to be exhibited in the Drawing From Life show include Adele Rossetti Morosini, Alice Tangerini, Jessica Tcherepnine, and Carol Woodin. Additional internationally known artists, including Anne Ophelia Dowden and Bobbi Angell, will be represented in the exhibition. The curator of the Drawing From Life exhibition and the Florilegium is Patricia Jonas, director of Library Services.

"Today there is an unprecedented flourishing of botanical art. As a new appreciation of both contemporary and classical botanical art emerges, it is useful to consider how the art world's embrace of modernism in the early decades of the 20th century affected botanical art, particularly Purdy's, and how gender influenced her artistic and professional choices. These themes, among others, will be explored in the exhibition," explained Jonas.

"Purdy's distinctiveness is in her dramatic composition and palette: Her gouaches used vivid colors on black board, unusual for botanical art, but this encourages viewers to take a completely fresh look at the plants she painted," said Jonas. "Florilegium artists use techniques and styles ranging from Alice Tangerini's unique use of a camera lucida for microscopic detail and quill pen and brush on drafting film to Adele Rossetti Morosini's layering of mixed media to achieve texture, depth, and voluptuous color. Together this art gives BBG a broad visual documentation of its living collections that is unique to U.S. botanic gardens. The exhibition will enable us to share Purdy's work with a large audience for the first time and demonstrate the continuity and context for botanical art at BBG" explained Jonas.

Drawing From Life will also include objects for artistic, social context (publications, herbarium specimens, sketchbooks); lectures with Florilegium artists and associates; hands-on family-oriented activities; a computer-based educational component for work too fragile for display; an Internet presence for the exhibition; and a catalog for national dissemination (64 pages, color illustrations, ed. of 1,000). Also planned is a symposium to explore topics such as the history and techniques of botanical art and issues of gender and prestige in the relationship between botanical artist and scientist. -- www.bbg.org