Imagine an orchard, lush and bursting with ripe fruit in the sweltering summer sun. Not all of the fruit weighing down the branches and vines will be fit to consume. Some strawberries will dampen and shrivel with mold, some peaches will be blighted in the shade, and some pears will become pockmarked with age.
However, there is a beauty in this natural decaying process that repeats with each season. Perhaps the rot will be cut away and the fruit will be preserved as jam, jellies, pie, or compote. Maybe a hungry child or traveler will wander through the orchard rows and choose a less-than- perfect specimen for their late afternoon snack. Right now, in orchards in New England and beyond, microscopic agents are at work consuming the fruit to its core in a world beyond our sight.
The Harvard Museum of Natural History is pleased to present Fruits in Decay, a special new exhibit in the Glass Flowers Gallery that explores blight, rot, and other diseases on summer fruits. It features exquisitely detailed glass botanical models of strawberries, peaches, apricots, plums, and pears made by famed glass artist Rudolf Blaschka between the years 1924-1932. On display for the first time in nearly two decades, these models capture—with astonishing realism—the intricacies and strange beauty of fruits in various stages of decay.
Donald H. Pfister, Curator of the Farlow Library and Herbarium of Cryptogamic Botany and Asa Gray Professor of Systematic Botany, praises the work of Blaschka, “Rudolf Blaschka’s last work centered on the creation of these models of diseased fruits. They are the culmination of his lifelong attention to accuracy and innovation. They illustrate the effects of fungi as agents of disease in plants and point to their importance in agricultural systems.”
Fruits in Decay includes more than twenty glass specimens depicting common agricultural diseases and the effects of fungus such as peach leaf curl, gray mold, brown rot, soft rot, blue mold, shot-hole disease, stony pear, pear scab, fire blight, and leaf spot.
Visitors will be able to see the delicate artistry of these celebrated Blaschka specimens August 31, 2019 through March 1, 2020. Fruits in Decay will replace the collection’s Rotten Apples exhibit, which will remain open until August 25, 2019.
