The Herbarium as Muse: Plant Specimens as Inspiration

An herbarium is a collection of preserved plant specimens, the majority of which are dried pressed plants attached to sheets of paper, though fruits, pollen, seeds, mosses, lichen are stored in other ways.  All these specimens are important to plant taxonomists, ecologists, and others who need the information such collections possess.  Herbaria are becoming more valuable because their specimens are often old enough to aid in documenting climate change and environmental degradation.  In addition, as the information on the sheets is digitized and made more widely available, the significance of these collections is becoming better known not only to scientists but to artists.  Some herbarium specimens are indeed works of art, that is, the type specimen, upon which the description of a species is based, is sometimes not a dried plant, but a drawing or painting of the plant.  The plants themselves are often beautifully arranged on sheets and have aesthetic as well as scientific value.  Finally, a number of contemporary artists are using herbarium collections as sources of inspiration for their work.  These include the oil paintings of Victoria Crowe, the watercolors of Rachel Pedder-Smith, the colored SEM scans and ceramics of Rob Kesseler, the seed drawings of Sophie Munns, and the installation art of James Walsh.  In addition, the German artists Joseph Beuys and Anselm Kiefer have used dried plants in their work, while Paul Klee created an herbarium as a source of images for his art.  This presentation will explore the interaction between art and science that takes place in this work and will argue that beauty and utility meet intimately in the herbarium.