From the PSB Special Issue on Art in the Botanical Sciences
Integrating Botany, History, Culture, and Contemporary Art in a Botanical Garden Museum Center’s biocultural (ethnobotany) collection, to feature the important work Garden staff is doing in botanical science.
Nezka Pfeifer
Museum Curator, Stephen and Peter Sachs Museum, Missouri Botanical Garden
Botanical gardens create a unique opportunity to intersect science, culture, and art to offer interdisciplinary experiences for the public. The Missouri Botanical Garden’s historic (ca. 1859) Botanical Museum was restored, renovated, and renamed the Stephen and Peter Sachs Museum and reopened to the public in late April 2018 after more than a century of alternate use. As the Museum Curator and sole staff member responsible for the Sachs Museum, I curate exhibitions using botanical science as the focus of the exhibition narrative, interweaving history, material culture, and inclusive perspectives, together with commissions of contemporary sitespecific work. As a part of the Science & Research Division at the Garden, the Sachs Museum collaborates with departments managing other plant-based collections, including the Herbarium (dried plant specimens) and the William Brown
Visitors to the Missouri Botanical Garden come from a spectrum of backgrounds—some are wellversed in botany and horticulture, but many are not. The challenge is to engage these publics on the myriad ways plants are relevant to our lives, yet also include the botanical science that the Garden experts work on daily in St. Louis and around the world. I focus on subjects that embrace the ubiquity of plants, so that visitors enjoy the rediscovery of plants on a subject previously overlooked. The foundation of the exhibition subject is on botany (and horticulture and entomology when relevant); this topic might feature in Garden research or have a universal impact and appeal. Where possible, I include little-known connections from other disciplines and collaborate with other science and community organizations, museums, and lenders to highlight information that might impact visitors on a personal level, such as regional history or material culture. Finally, I commission contemporary artists to create artworks that interpret the botanical subject in unique and meaningful ways to expand understanding about the subject. The two most recent exhibitions at the Sachs Museum embodied the key goals I am trying to achieve with this multidisciplinary framework. I also create live in-person programs as well as digital content for exhibitions for both education and promotion; this includes musical performances, virtual tours, multiple blog posts, myriad social media posts on X (Twitter) and Instagram, and talk series highlighting the art and science connections.
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