¡Viva la Frida! Celebrate the life and spirit of Frida Kahlo during this weekend’s bevy of Frida-filled festivities, which just so happen to cap off the week of the artist’s birthday!
You’ll definitely run into Frida and Diego, a few times over…well at least their doppelgangers, during the much anticipated Look-Alike Contest on Saturday. See a parade of Fridas and Diegos showing off their finest attire inspired by the colorful duo and vote for your favorite at the Conservatory Plaza!
Throughout the weekend, enjoy live music and dance at the Conservatory Plaza. Get crafty and create a beautiful flower crown inspired by the artist’s legendary fashion savvy at the Conservatory Lawn, then hop over to the Visitor Center to watch famed street artist Bradley Theodore create a mural in front of your eyes.
And kids will love the giant monarch butterfly puppets moving throughout the Garden, designed by internationally-known Bronx artist Lucrecia Novoa.
Although the Frida al Fresco Evening on Saturday is sold out, we encourage you to come back during a future night to experience the exhibition in a dramatically different light!
Premiering tonight, Wednesday, June 10, an incredible live presentation by internationally renowned artist Jenny Holzer will take place at the Garden—and we hope you’ll join us for the opportunity to experience it! For four consecutive nights during our Frida al Fresco evenings, Jenny Holzer in conjunction with The Poetry Society of America and The New York Botanical Garden will present a program of scrolling light projections on the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.
For more than 30 years Jenny Holzer has presented her astringent ideas, arguments, and sorrows in public places and international exhibitions. Her medium is always writing, and the public dimension is integral to the delivery of the work. Reflecting Kahlo’s intense relationship with her culture and the natural world, Holzer’s hour-long presentation will include poems by Mexico’s Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz, verses from contemporary Mexican female poets, and even a selection of powerful passages from Frida Kahlo’s own diary.
Juana and Yolanda, our visiting Mexican artisans, delighted the public with their artistic weaving and embroidery techniques.
During the opening weeks of FRIDA KAHLO: Art, Garden, Life, the Botanical Garden hosted two special guests from Mexico. Juana and Yolanda, sisters from the town of Zinacatán in the state of Chiapas, were showing off the ancient technique of weaving with the back strap loom and decorating cloth with beautiful embroidery. Wearing traditional garments that they made and adorned themselves, they caught the attention of many visitors.
An evocation of Kahlo’s studio in the Haupt Conservatory.
Many of us got our first glimpse of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s life with the award-winning 2002 biopic starring Salma Hayek and directed by Julie Taymor, of Lion King fame. But the Frida now on view at The New York Botanical Garden’s exhibition, FRIDA KAHLO: Art, Garden, Life, is a totally different person from the film version.
The new exhibition is the first to “re-imagine” Kahlo’s garden and to explore her appreciation of nature—including the many plants, insects, and fascinating animal imagery in her paintings.
Frida Kahlo adored the garden at her home, the Casa Azul (Blue House), in Coyoacán, Mexico. Her painting studio directly overlooked the garden with its cobalt blue walls and fabulous collection of native Mexican plants. The garden was both an inspiration and a private haven during Kahlo’s personal battles with chronic illnesses and disabilities.
NYBG is open on Memorial Day! So come enjoy the holiday weekend amid the Garden’s seasonal spring beauty, with three days of our festive weekend programs surrounding FRIDA KAHLO: Art, Garden, Life. With plenty of tours scheduled to highlight what’s beautiful in spring, there are many ways to experience the Garden this weekend. Continue reading for the full details of this Saturday, Sunday, and Monday’s special tours, film screenings, and live music and dance.
Don’t forget to check out our Mobile Guide, supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, to enhance your experience!
If you’re out of town this weekend, next weekend is our Annual Science Open House—a once-a-year glimpse into the groundbreaking research that goes on at NYBG, with special tours of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, the Steere Herbarium, and the Plant Research Laboratory.
We’re counting down the days to the Opening Weekend Celebration of NYBG’s blockbuster summer exhibition, FRIDA KAHLO: Art, Garden, Life. The Garden is abuzz with busy preparation that will extend across the grounds, from an exhibition of more than a dozen original works by Frida Kahlo in the Art Gallery of the LuEsther T. Mertz Library, to a beautiful evocation of Kahlo’s famed garden and studio, the Casa Azul, in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.
In fact, there are 10 main components to this grand and immersive exhibition across the Garden! So, with funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, NYBG has developed a mobile guide for smartphones that will take you through the entire experience, either on-site or before you visit! Read on for how this digital companion will help you navigate the exhibition, learn more about the artist’s life and times, and create your own customizable Frida selfies to share!
Karen Daubmann is NYBG’s AVP for Exhibitions. She has researched, planned, and installed over 50 exhibitions in her seven years at the Garden.
At The New York Botanical Garden, exhibitions are planned over many years with the intent of bringing to life distant lands, influential people, interesting plants, rarely seen gardens, and fantastic landscapes. We immerse ourselves in the study of our subjects with the goal of evoking the gardens and the spirits of their creators within the walls of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. In 2010, we transformed the galleries into Emily Dickinson’s Garden, complete with a path “just wide enough for two who love.” In 2012, when we celebrated Claude Monet, we knew the garden we created was one that he was surely enjoying when the glasshouse emptied each evening.
When we began to research Frida Kahlo, we wanted to delve into the story of the woman who has been examined through her pain and suffering and paint her in a different light. We wanted to learn more about the iconic face that is emblazoned on canvases, the strong and fierce-looking dark-haired, dark-eyed woman who used to be known as Diego Rivera’s wife and is now known simply as Frida. The more we researched, the more intrigued we became.
To us, Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird was an image of a woman immersed in tropical flora. Her still-life paintings, an important yet lesser-known portion of her work, are informative displays of the rich diversity of Mexico’s plant life. We were fascinated by the incredible detail of Kahlo’s curated life, as evidenced by her paintings, her letters, and archival photos of Kahlo and Rivera in their garden. Her story was ripe to be told by The New York Botanical Garden.
¡Viva la Frida! Celebrate the life and spirit of Frida Kahlo during this weekend’s bevy of Frida-filled festivities, which just so happen to cap off the week of the artist’s birthday!
