Flora Mania Opening Reception

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Winter woes got you glum? Don’t be a shrinking violet! Come and see the Lloyd Library & Museum shamelessly flaunt our petals, leaves, stamens, and stems in the new exhibition, Flora Mania.

The exhibition presents and interrogates scientific and artistic responses to flowers with particular attention to environmental sustainability, the legacy of colonialism, and the artistic impulse to capture their beauty. Highlights include an 1805 botanical by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, illustrated by Marie Antoinette’s official court artist, Pierre-Joseph Redouté; Hooker’s Illustrations of Himalayan Plants (1855) drawn by Walter Hood Fitch and a team of native artists; Georg Ehret’s hand-colored illustrations in Christoph Jakob Trew’s Plantae Selectae (1750-1773), often considered Germany’s greatest botanical; and the mighty Flora Graeca (1806-1840), perhaps the most splendid and expensive flora ever produced, which the Oxford Bodleian Library describes as their “finest botanical treasure.”