The Humanities Institute hosted a Colloquium on Friday, September 9, 2016, entitled Shifts in the 19th-century American Cultural Landscape. Organized in conjunction with the exhibition Impressionism: American Gardens on Canvas, this round-table looked at the various cultural-philosophic and economic forces that led to rapidly changing landscapes in America. Participants discussed how these developments impacted the 19th-century vision of nature, the art of landscape painting, and the design of gardens and choice of plants.
On June 19, we welcomed Artist in Residence James Gurney and 24 of the region’s top plein-air painters for NYBG’s first ever Plein-Air Invitational.
Organizing a Plein-Air festival was a new experience for all of us. We worked with different internal teams as well as James Gurney, who provided valuable suggestions. With his help, we selected the best locations for paintings and included models dressed in Victorian period attire. We also took pictures of the different gardens for the artists to visualize our surroundings before they arrived. We sent these images along with the event guidelines and each of the artists responded with their three ideal locations. We collected all their responses and finalized all of the logistics.
On Sunday morning, our staff was ready to welcome these expert artists. We brought lunch, welcome kits, nametags, and all of our energy to greet them. For many of the artists it was their first time visiting our grounds, and everyone was excited to share their talent and see the Garden as their muse.
At NYBG we’re enjoying a lush summer season, with flowers and greenery abounding across our historic landscape. The Native Plant Garden is full of colorful perennials and graceful ferns, while Daylily Walk is ablaze with these warm flowers. In the Rose Garden, you’ll still find a wealth of blooms—hundreds of varieties of floribundas, hybrid teas, and shrub roses creating an unbelievable palette of colors.
This Sunday, June 19, we’re opening our gates to a cadre of some of the finest out-of-doors painters the region has to offer during our Plein-Air Invitational—over 20 plein-air artists who will set up their canvases across grounds and look to our 250 acres for inspiration.
Among them is James Gurney, one of our area’s leading artists and a nationally recognized painter whose work you might’ve caught during the opening weekend of our Impressionism: American Gardens on Canvas exhibition. If you weren’t so lucky to see him in May, now is your chance to see the master in action. You can find a full list of participating artists here, and we invite everyone to visit their personal websites after the Invitational and it was amazing to see his following, some might even say he needs to buy views on Instagram to grow it even more—they’ll be selling the works they create!
During the opening weekend celebration for Impressionism: American Gardens on Canvas, and in honor of our 125th Anniversary, I had the pleasure of being a judge for our first ever cake contest! We reached out to local bakeries and challenged them to create special anniversary cakes with the theme of nature, gardens, plants, and art—a broad theme that allowed for the creativity of these master bakers to shine through.
Judging was based on aesthetics and interpretation of the theme (not by tasting, unfortunately for me, though each bakery did supply a sheet cake for sampling). Having to rank these works of art was difficult, but between the public voting via text messages and the other two judges—Casey Barber and Jen Chung—we managed to narrow down our choices.
After months of preparation and a frenetic few weeks in the Haupt Conservatory, where our horticulturists were buzzing about with hollyhocks, poppies, and foxgloves, opening weekend for Impressionism: American Gardens on Canvas has finally arrived. And with the mid-spring flux of wildly blooming flowers and greening trees surrounding us, it’s a pretty good time to get reacquainted with NYBG!
Join us Saturday and Sunday for the Opening Weekend Celebration, featuring live music, plein-air painting, craft activities, dance, and a special cake tasting by some of New York’s top bakeries. It’s going to be an incredible run, and the show is only just getting started.
Clouds, streaks, flurries of color—the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory is painted with Impressionist beauty going into opening weekend. The exhibition runs May 14–September 11. I hope to see you there!
Impressionism: American Gardens on Canvas is already shaping up to be a picturesque summer exhibition with all the right touches of classic horticulture—just ask the poppies.
Papaver nudicaule ‘Champagne Bubbles’ in the Nolen Greenhouses – Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Taking place on Sunday, May 20, The New York Botanical Garden welcomes the Hartford Symphony Orchestra in hosting “Monet’s Friends,” an accompaniment to our exhibition that magnifies the art of the era through the strains of musical Impressionism. Your ticket to the chamber music series will also include access to Monet’s Garden, allowing a full-circle experience of the sights and sounds that France embodied in the late 1800s.
Beyond the masterful paintings that emerged from Claude Monet’s time at Giverny, the threshold of the 20th century brought with it a wealth of musical experimentation in Europe. From this innovative turn came revered French composers: Debussy, Roussel, Fauré. As contemporaries to the great visual Impressionist, their music–like Monet’s art–redefined genre boundaries, dipping into an atmospheric exploration of composition and technique that defied the conventions of the day.
