From the PSB Special Issue on Art in the Botanical Sciences
Celebrating the Launch of the UTEP Virtual Herbarium by Highlighting Contemporary and Historical Art and Science of the El Paso Region Mingna V. Zhuang1,3 Nabil Gonzalez2 Michael L. Moody1 1 UTEP Biodiversity Collections, Biological Sciences Department, University of Texas at El Paso, 500 W University Ave. El Paso, TX 79968 2 Art Department, University of Texas at El Paso, 500 W University Ave. El Paso, TX 79968 3 Author for correspondence: mzhuang@utep.edu
As archives of historical plant specimens, herbaria provide snapshots of environmental landscapes across time that are continuously accessed, recontextualized, and reinterpreted through modern techniques. Moreover, specimen imaging in herbaria has been key to recent global digitization efforts that confer multiple benefits, including facilitating taxonomic revisions and enabling better access to biodiversity data (Soltis, 2017). Specimens also become discoverable to non-traditional researchers, such as artists and the interested public. From 2019 to 2022, the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) herbarium imaged and georeferenced all its specimens (~50,000 records) from the southwest US and Mexico, funded by two grants (IMLS IGSM-245733 and NSF DBI1902078). To celebrate these projects, largely conducted by biology undergraduates, we developed the exhibit “Where We Will Grow: Elsie Slater, Plants, and Art” at UTEP’s Centennial Museum and Chihuahuan Desert Gardens (Fall 2021–Spring 2022) to showcase the history, art, and science of the herbarium. We chose to highlight Elsie Slater
(1871–1952), a self-taught botanist, because her collections represented the earliest specimens from El Paso held by our herbarium and because her unique dual interests in both the arts and the sciences. Slater was a writer and artist whose works are held at UTEP (Centennial Museum and C. L. Sonnichsen Special Collections), which span the scientific (exceptional botanical art) to the impressionistic. Drawing from Elsie’s diverse interests, the UTEP Herbarium partnered with the Art Department’s Drawing I Class taught by Nabil Gonzalez to use specimens from Elsie’s collections as inspiration for student art. Because of COVID-19 restrictions, art students visited the new digital herbarium (Project Page: https://arctos. database.museum/project/10003615) rather than the physical herbarium. Collections Manager Vicky Zhuang met with the students via Zoom during a class period to introduce the project. She described the herbarium, provided examples of how researchers used herbarium specimens, and guided the students through how to use the database to find images of specimens. Students were then instructed by Nabil to reinterpret Elsie’s point of view towards the botanical world and the romance of life. Each student researched their chosen specimens and subsequently created a composition representing a page out of a journal. The students were asked to restrict their search to the El Paso area and to focus on Elsie’s collections when possible. However, they were intentionally not exposed to Elsie’s artworks, so they would be inspired to develop their ideas independently and with few limitations. With regards to the exhibit, students were only told that their pieces would be paired with Elsie’s works and specimens in a botany
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