(IN)TANGIBLE HERITAGE(S)
Abstract
Botanical displays—both animate and inanimate—may act as rhetorical demonstrations having broader social, cultural, and political implications. As forms of cultural production, botanical displays and gardens represent a particular way of seeing and being in the world. As place-making activities, gardens shape and are shaped by social practices that allow them to appear in the forms, places, and times we find them. From fictional to physical spaces, gardens result from deliberative and selective processes, methods, and materials motivated by individual and institutional beliefs, values, desires, and needs. Harvard University offers a case in point, with holdings including the Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants (the Glass Flowers) at Harvard Museum of Natural History and Dumbarton Oaks Research Library in Washington, D.C. These ‘gardens’ are in dialog. As garden types, however, the Glass Flowers and the gardens of Dumbarton Oaks are uniquely reflective of their historical and social context. The overarching question concerns similarities in the formation and narratives of botanical displays, and in their rhetorical appeals, while performing “nature” through different organic and inorganic materials. Each botanical display performs as part of Harvard’s official zone of exhibition; they participate in demonstrating to audiences what is valuable, significant, and worthy in botanical study as well as in the institution. Enacted in semi-public spaces, both the Glass Flowers and the holdings of Dumbarton Oaks exhibit ideological and social leadership by leveraging public display. Both rhetorically incorporate their audiences as subject and beneficiary through the admiration of physical artifacts and garden experiences. Though institutional botanical displays may not directly declare their motives in visual culture, the reception and values that are mutually constructed between individuals and institutions underscore each site’s public address.
Mackenzie Bullard is a PhD candidate in the College of Design at North Carolina State University. She holds a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Flagler College and a master’s degree in Art and Design from North Carolina State University. Her research interest connects visual rhetoric, representations of nature, and garden theory. In addition, she is a practitioner of natural dyeing and weaving, for which she has been awarded an international residency at Arquetopia Foundation in Mexico. Her passion for teaching the art, science, and beauty of natural dyes extends from assistantships at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and Penland School of Crafts in the United States to hands-on activities at the North Carolina Museum of Natural History to classrooms and symposium at North Carolina State University. Currently, she is preparing two kinetic sculptures, Rats: Boston and Weeds: Dandelion, for exhibition in the 2022 A Cache of Kinetic Art: Timeless Movements at the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey.
M. Elen Deming, D.Des. is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Founding Director of the Doctor of Design program at NC State University. She holds Masters degrees in Landscape Architecture, as well as Art and Architectural History, and completed her Doctor of Design degree in Landscape History and Theory. Dr. Deming is an environmental humanist who examines cultural history, values, and meaning in landscape representation. Past editor of Landscape Journal (2002-2009), Deming is author of Landscape Architecture Research (with Simon Swaffield, 2011), along with related articles and essays on design research in landscape architecture. Dr. Deming is also editor of two collections of essays on cultural landscapes: Values in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Design (LSU Press 2015) as well as Landscape Observatory: The Work of Terence Harkness (ORO/AR+D 2017), on regionalism in design. Currently, she is co-editing a book on changing visual narratives in public places of the American South, as well as writing a book on visual codes and cultural values of the Garden City movement and other green utopias of the 20th century.