Boston Flora

Tag: Davis Museum

  • Through Sunday, December 15 – Rory McEwen: A New Perspective on Nature

    Rory McEwen: A New Perspective on Nature presents the vibrant career of the renowned Scottish artist, Rory McEwen (1932-1982). Focusing on his remarkable paintings of plants, the exhibition reveals McEwen’s lifelong enquiry into light and color in portraying his unique concept of the natural object. Over the course of his career, with his all-embracing perspective of modern art, McEwen developed a distinctive style, painting on vellum and using large empty backgrounds on which his plant portraits seem to float. In his paintings he forged his own personal interpretation of 20th century modernism, portraying individual flowers, leaves and vegetables as subject matter, “as a way of getting as close as possible to what I perceive as the truth, my truth of the time in which I live.”

    Rory McEwen: A New Perspective on Nature presents 85 watercolors on vellum and paper, representing a wide range of the artist’s work, along with many of the well-known 17th and 18th century masters who influenced him—including Robert, Redouté, Ehret, Aubriet as well as early illuminated manuscripts and folio volumes. McEwen’s work is also presented alongside the works of numerous contemporary artists who in turn continue McEwen’s artistic legacy. It includes works on loan from the Collection of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Mellon’s Oak Spring Garden Foundation Collection, the Shirley Sherwood Collection and the McEwen Family Estate Collection, as well as works from numerous private collections, most of which have never before been seen by the American public. McEwen’s work is found in private and public collections across the globe, including the British Museum; Victoria and Albert Museum; Tate; National Gallery of Modern Art, Scotland; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Hunt Institute, Pittsburgh; and Museum of Modern Art, New York.

    The exhibition, Rory McEwen: A New Perspective on Nature, is presented by the Davis Museum at Wellesley College in association with Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (London) and Oak Spring Garden Foundation (Virginia); tour management by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA.

    The Gerard B. Lambert Foundation has provided major support for the exhibition. Generous support for the Davis presentation is provided by Wellesley College Friends of Art at the Davis, the Alice G. Spink Art Fund, the Constance Rhind Robey ’81 Fund for Museum Exhibitions, and the Kathryn Wasserman Davis ’28 Fund for World Cultures. Below: Rory McEwen, Tulip ‘Julia Farnese’ rose feather, 1976, Watercolour on vellum, ©Estate of Rory McEwen

  • Tuesday, February 27, 6:45 pm – Frederick Law Olmsted and The Massachusetts Legacy

    On Tuesday, February 27, the Norwood Evening Garden Club will host Alan S. Banks who will discuss Frederic Law Olmsted and The Massachusetts Legacy. The meeting will be held at 6:45 p.m. at the Carriage House behind the First Baptist Church, 71 Bond Street, Norwood. The public is invited to attend for a small donation ($5). Refreshments will be served.

    Founded over a century ago, the Frederick Law Olmsted firm was involved in over 1200 landscape architecture projects throughout Massachusetts, ranging from expansive 500-acre public parks to intimate private gardens. One of its greatest achievements is the six-mile “emerald necklace” of ponds, parks and parkways that winds its way through Boston. Olmsted historian Alan Banks brings this rich landscape legacy alive as he explores the ideas that shaped some of the most treasured lands in Massachusetts.

    Alan Banks is the Supervisory Park Ranger at the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site in Brookline. During the last 16 years, he has developed a variety of landscape walking tours, slide lectures and presentations about the Olmsteds and their work. His programs have been presented to clubs, civic groups, schools, and libraries across Massachusetts. He was a featured speaker at Wellesley College’s Davis Museum as part of their Viewing Olmsted exhibit and was highlighted in the Boston Globe for his walking tours of the Boston Park System. Banks also has served as an Olmsted consultant on various projects including working with Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art on their Art on the Emerald Necklace exhibit and Olmsted’s Landscape Art, a traveling photographic exhibit created in cooperation with the Emerald Necklace Conservancy. He also recently worked with National Geographic Magazine and was lauded for his insightful interpretation of Olmsted’s work in Boston. Legacy Magazine published his article Interpreting Cultural Landscapes: Turning the Inside Out. Working with the National Register of Historic Places he produced Boston’s Arnold Arboretum: A Place for Study and Recreation as part of their Teaching with Historic Places program. It is now available to teachers nationwide to use in their classrooms both in print and via the World Wide Web.

    A member of The Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts, New England Garden Clubs, and National Garden Clubs, Inc., members of the Norwood Evening Garden Club have been providing education and public beautification in Norwood and its surrounding communities since 1996. The Club, open to novice and expert gardeners, draws its members from Norwood, Walpole, Westwood, Dedham, Medfield, Randolph, and Stoughton. For information about the Norwood Evening Garden Club, contact Barbara at 781-762-1270 or visit www.NorwoodEveningGardenClub.com.

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  • Saturday, March 15, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm – The Art of Science in New England, 1700 – 1920

    The 2014 Wellesley-Deerfield Symposium on Saturday, March 15, from 9 – 4, will explore visual representations of scientific inquiry produced, collected, distributed or otherwise circulating in New England from the start of the 18th century to the first decades of the 20th century.  Scholars from a wide range of disciplines will address a variety of topics from the use of anatomical and biological models in scientific pedagogy to the impact of mechanical inventions for enhancing vision on artistic and scientific practice.  Presenters include Daria D’Arienzo, Archival Consultant, Nancy Siegel, Associate Professor of History, Towson University, Ellery Foutch, Terra Foundation Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Adam M. Thomas, Ph.D. Candidate, Art History, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Dennis Carr, Carolyn and Peter Lynch Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Art of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Lita Tirak, Ph.D. Candidate, American Studies, The College of William and Mary, Peter Benes, Co-Founder, Director, and Editor of the Dubin Seminar for New England Folklife, Naomi Slipp, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of the History of Art & Architecture, Boston University, Catherine Newman Howe, Research Associate, Department of Art, Williams College, and Kathleen M. Raley-Susman, Professor of Biology and Jacob P. Giroud, Jr. Chair of Natural History, Vassar College.

    The Symposium will take place in the Collins Cinema, Davis Museum at Wellesley College.  Free and open to the public, but seating is limited.  For further information call 781-283-2043.  Sponsored by the Grace Slack McNeil Program for Studies in American Art at Wellesley College, the Office of Academic Programs at Historic Deerfield, and the Barra Foundation.

    Accompanying the Symposium is the Davis Museum exhibit “The Art of Science: Object Lessons at Wellesley College, 1870 – 1940,” in the Robert and Claire Freedman Lober Viewing Alcove, on view through June 22, 2014.

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  • Through January 15, 2012 – Global Flora: Botanical Imagery and Exploration

    Global Flora: Botanical Imagery and Exploration, an exhibition linking the history of botanical imagery with the adventure of exploration and effects of globalization on our our contemporary world opened on October 19. On view through January 15, 2012 in the Morelle Lasky Levine ’56 Works on Paper Gallery at Wellesley College, the exhibition is free and open to the public. To complement the exhibition, the Davis will present an Interdisciplinary Gallery Walk (November 9). According to Elaine Mehalakes, Kemper Curator of Academic Programs and curator of Global Flora, the 28 works in this exhibit — from engravings that date back to the 1500’s to contemporary still lifes — are not only exquisitely detailed depictions of flora and fauna, but also tell a story about the complex relationships that have evolved alongside botanical art. Drawn from the Davis collections and Wellesley College Library’s Special Collections, the prints and illustrated books on view also demonstrate the changes from the 16th century to the present in techniques used to depict botanical imagery—from woodcuts, engravings, and mezzotints to lithographs, cyanotypes, and inkjet prints; from the hand-colored to the color printed; and from the compact to the lavishly outsized. They display variations in format and purpose, though with equal attention given to accuracy, from floral still lifes imbued with symbolic meaning to precise depictions of individual plants with their component parts labeled for scientific classification.  For hours and more information, visit https://www.davismuseum.wellesley.edu/news/4123.  Below is Isabella Kirkland’s “Trade.”