Portable Museum of Curiosity inspired by Robert Dick baker & botanist of Thurso 1811-1866 made by artist, Joanne B Kaar in collaboration with Joanne Howdle museum curator for Caithness Horizons Museum, Iconic Artists in Iconic Places Artist Residency funded by Museums Galleries Scotland and Creative Scotland is to feature in Scientific conference – American Association for The Advancement of Science, in Boston on the 15th February 2013.

THE HERBARIUM AS MUSE: PLANT SPECIMENS AS INSPIRATION
Maura C. Flannery
Professor of Biology, St. John’s University, NY

A herbarium is a collection of preserved plant specimens, the majority of which are dried pressed plants attached to sheets of paper, though fruits, pollen, seeds, mosses, lichen are stored in other ways.

The living Gentian is obviously more aesthetically pleasing than the herbarium specimen. However, I will argue here that specimens themselves have aesthetic qualities and also serve as inspiration for many artists.

Herbaria are important to plant taxonomists, ecologists, and others who need the information such collections possess. Herbaria are becoming more valuable because their specimens are often old enough to aid in documenting climate change and environmental degradation. In addition, as the information on the sheets is digitized and made more widely available, the significance of these collections is becoming better known not only to scientists but to artists.

Some herbarium specimens are indeed works of art, that is, the type specimen, upon which the description of a species is based, is sometimes not a dried plant, but a drawing or painting of the plant. The plants themselves are often beautifully arranged on sheets and have aesthetic as well as scientific value.

In addition, a number of contemporary artists are using herbarium collections as founts of inspiration for their work. Paul Klee created an herbarium he used to provide images for his art. The German artists Joseph Beuys and Anselm Kiefer employed dried plants in some of their mixed media pieces. British artists Victoria Crowe (oil paintings), Rachel Pedder-Smith (watercolors), and Rob Kesseler (SEM scan and ceramics) have all drawn ideas from herbarium collections. This presentation will explore the interaction between art and science that takes place in this work and will argue that beauty and utility meet intimately in the herbarium. It will focus particularly on the creations of Scottish artist Joanne B. Kaar who has had a residency at the Caithness Horizons Museum in Thurso Scotland. The Museum holds the 3000-specimen herbarium of the 19th-century botanist/baker Robert Dick. Karr has worked with museum curator Joanne Howdle to preserve and digitize the Dick specimens, and then has included images of the specimens in several of her artworks, including the Portable Museum of Curiosity (2012), based on the moss-collecting box which belonged to Dick.

The Portable Museum of Curiosity, opened, used by permission of the artist. When Kaar incorporates specimens images in her work, she often digitally “cleans” up the backgrounds to make them look more aesthetically appealing.

However, for the specimens in the digitized museum collection, no such alterations are made, the patina of age remains. This brings up a number of interesting aesthetic questions on the interplay of art and science. Herbarium specimen in a drawer of the Portable Museum of Curiostiy.

An exploration of herbaria in the context of art reveals that there are a number of different aspects to this topic, including the importance of herbaria as cultural as well as scientific resources.

Source: Joanne B Kaar