Boston Flora

Tag: Mike Beck

  • Thaddeus Thompson Named Interim Executive Director of Berkshire Botanical Garden

    Mike Beck, BBG’s Executive Director, is taking a sabbatical to spend two years in England. He will accompany his husband, a corporate lawyer with strong expertise in the technology sector, who is pursuing a career opportunity ‘across the pond’ that will extend from this September through 2023.

    During that time, Beck’s duties will be fulfilled by incoming Interim Executive Director Thaddeus Thompson., pictured below. Thompson served as the Director of Institutional Advancement at Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boylston, Massachusetts, during a period of extraordinary growth and development. He is also a member of the Board of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, which oversees the Gardens at Elm Bank in Wellesley. Thompson was offered the position after a diligent candidate search conducted by members of BBG’s Board of Trustees. While Thompson will work independently, with full executive powers, he intends to communicate regularly with Beck, keeping him informed of developments and drawing from Beck’s extensive knowledge of the Garden, its staff, and its community.

    That the Board was willing to consider a two-year sabbatical is testament to how much Mike Beck is respected and well-liked by the Garden’s staff and Trustees. His leadership, for close to eight years, has attracted a strong and talented staff with a great sense of teamwork. During his tenure, the Garden has expanded in many ways, including an arts program that has put BBG’s Leonhardt Galleries on the map as a significant cultural venue; a Music Mondays program that is attracting new audiences to the Garden; a new Tea Room offering refreshments; and exponential growth in attendance. He also successfully led the Garden through the pandemic, keeping the grounds open on a limited basis as a community service, and keeping the staff fully intact, with no layoffs.

  • Monday, March 1 – Sunday, March 14 – Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Annual Bulb Show

    Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Fitzpatrick Conservatory becomes a harbinger of spring starting March 1, when the public is invited to enjoy hundreds of flowering bulbs in an annual exhibition featuring New England springtime favorites along with some striking, lesser-known varieties hand-picked by BBG’s horticulturists. Visitors to the greenhouse will see an evolving collection of 1,400 blooming bulbs over a two-week period.

    Some of the standouts from last year’s show will be back, including the diminutive Muscari armeniacum ‘Big Smile’ Grape Hyacinth and the enchanting Fritillaria meleagris, or Guinea Hen Flower, with its nodding, bell-shaped blooms in a variety of showy colors and faintly checkered patterns. Alongside these will be some new inclusions: ‘Vincent Van Gogh,’ a striking, dark purple tulip with fringed petals; a diminutive, pink-orange tulip called ‘Salmon Gem’; a trio of new daffodils; and two exquisite dwarf irises, ‘Harmony’ and ‘Pauline,’ with flowers of brilliant blue and deep purple, respectively. 

    “The horticulture department at BBG is excited to open our doors to the public to showcase the colors and fragrances of spring at the Bulb Show,” said Director of Horticulture Matthew Turnbull. “By March, we all need a remedy to ward off the winter blues.”

    As in previous years, the bulbs will be exhibited amongst the Garden’s collection of succulents housed year-round in the Fitzpatrick Conservatory, a period building replete with curved glass. The soft grays and greens of the succulents’ foliage provide a contrasting backdrop for the bright colors of tulips, narcissus, hyacinths, irises and other New England springtime bulbs. 

    “Last year’s Bulb Show had to be cut short because of the sudden onset of COVID restrictions and concerns,”said BBG Executive Director Mike Beck. “We had a greenhouse full of beautiful color and scent, and hardly anyone to enjoy that. This year, I am very excited to bring this taste of spring back to the hundreds of visitors who routinely come for a quick escape from winter.”

    Those interested in learning the behind-the-scenes story of how the Bulb Show comes together each year are invited to read, “The Dirt on the Bulb Show” in this year’s Winter/Spring issue of Berkshire Botanical Garden’s free magazine, Cuttings, available in print throughout the Berkshires region and online at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/cuttings-magazine. A gallery of images from last year’s Bulb Show is available as well, at: https://photos.app.goo.gl/1tCkdnvCeE6UKmLd9

    The Bulb Show runs March 1- 14, daily from 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. Considered the Garden’s gift to the community, Bulb Show admission is free; however, for safety in compliance with current state guidelines, advance reservations are required, as are masks. Visitors are asked to plan ahead, as all other buildings at the Garden remain closed for the season, and restrooms will not be available.  Visit http://berkshirebotanical.org for reservations.

  • Sunday, May 6 – Monday, October 8 – Ellsworth Kelly: Plant Lithographs

    Berkshire Botanical Garden announces a season-long exhibition featuring the plant lithographs of artist Ellsworth Kelly beginning Sunday, May 6 in the Garden’s Leonhardt Galleries, Stockbridge. Kelly lived and worked in Columbia County, New York for nearly 50 years and was deeply drawn to the area’s natural beauty. The exhibition, assembled from Kelly’s iconic series, Suite of Plant Lithographs, is on loan from the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation through October 8.

    Kelly began making lithographs in Paris in 1964, and over the next few years created a seminal body of work as both an homage to and bold departure from Matisse’s evocative line drawings. Throughout his seven-decade career, Kelly’s plant drawings were rendered in a variety of mediums, including watercolor and ink washes, but he preferred graphite pencil and the use of line only to express the plants’ intrinsic qualities. Carter Foster, considered an authority on the life and work of Ellsworth Kelly describes Kelly’s creative process:

    For the series of 1964-66 lithographs that are the subject of this exhibition, he mostly chose from a range of pencil studies he’d recently made, which he then reworked on transfer paper in order to create the print portfolio. He was therefore redrawing–from his own drawing–a specimen he’d first drawn from life. In other cases, he drew while directly observing the plant, right on the transfer paper used to make the lithograph. In another case–Catalpa Leaf–he drew the form from memory. This series, taken as a whole, has a uniformity provided by the consistent size and color of the paper and by the harmonious, roughly centered placement of the forms on each sheet, even though there were several modes of generating the form: observation from life, copying, and memory. It is quite a different act to re-draw one’s own drawing or to draw from memory than to draw from life, from the object itself. In the first case, for example, one could change–even perfect–what may not have been fully satisfactory the first time.

    Ellsworth Kelly: Plant Lithographs is the first major exhibition at the Garden’s Leonhardt Galleries which are located in its newly restored and renovated c. 1800s Center House. “Our objective in planning the galleries was to create unique spaces for artists who truly find their inspiration in the natural world,” said the Garden’s Executive Director, Mike Beck. “This collection of work exemplifies an extraordinary artist who throughout his career consistently returned to nature as a primary subject. We look forward to a season of sharing this collection with the Berkshire community and beyond.” The exhibit will remain on display through October 8. Gallery hours are daily, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. Support for this exhibition has been generously provided by the Dorothea Leonhardt Fund at the Communities Foundation of Texas, Inc.

    The opening of Kelly’s exhibition on May 6 coincides with the Garden’s 84th annual Roy Boutard Day, a celebration steeped in history and tradition. Admission to the Garden is free all day.

    Berkshire Botanical Garden is located at 5 West Stockbridge Road in Stockbridge. For more information visit http://berkshirebotanical.org or call 413 298-3926.

    ELLSWORTH KELLY Cyclamen V 1964-65 Lithograph on Rives BFK paper 35 5/8 x 24 1/4 inches (90.5 x 61.6 cm) Edition of 75 © Ellsworth Kelly Foundation and Maeght Éditeur