The annual Hunt Institute Open House at Carnegie Mellon University will be held from 1 to 4:30 p.m. Sunday and Monday and include tours of the exhibition "What We Collect: Recent Art Acquisitions, 2007-2012." Admission is free.

Highlights include institute curator Lugene Bruno speaking on "Botanical Wall Charts" at 3:15 p.m. Sunday, and assistant librarian Jeannette McDevitt speaking on "From Field to Folio: Stories Behind Botanical Publications" at 3:15 p.m. Monday.

Ms. Bruno will present an overview of the instructional wall charts in the institute collection. Made in Europe in the late 19th to early 20th centuries, the large-scale lithographs featured plant family characteristics and were used in botany courses around the globe. Now outdated as a teaching tool, they are salvaged from storage areas and dumpsters for preservation by institutions such as the Hunt.

Ms. McDevitt will bring to life the backstory of botanists and botanical artists who traveled to isolated sites to document the world's flora. She will show special works from the collection and speak to "the dramas, disasters and absurdities" that led up to the publication of the elegant volumes.

The exhibition "What We Collect" comprises recent acquisitions from the early 19th century through the present in a surprising range of media including watercolor on paper and vellum; ink, graphite and charcoal drawing; copper etching, wood engraving, vitreography and nature printing; and gelatin silver photography. Included are original illustrations for an early 19th-century botanical handbook and its contemporary, the field guide; a 20th-century seed packet and a booklet on seedling identification; a 20th-century monograph on the mistletoe genus and a journal article on marine fungi; independent projects on floras of a region, native and medicinal plants and plants and their pollinators; and recent botanical artworks by artists previously represented in Hunt Institute's International Exhibition of Art & Illustration.

The Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation is on the fifth floor of the Hunt Library, Carnegie Mellon University, Oakland. Dedicated in 1961, it is an internationally respected center for bibliographical research and service in the interests of botany and horticulture, and a center for the study of all aspects of the history of the plant sciences. The collections include approximately 30,150 book and serial titles; more than 29,000 portraits; 29,270 watercolors, drawings and prints; more than 243,000 data files; and 2,000 autograph letters and manuscripts. The open house schedule is:

SUNDAY

Registration opens at 1 p.m.

1:15 p.m. -- Welcome and introduction in reading room by publication and marketing manager Scarlett Townsend.

1:30 p.m. -- Exhibition tour by curatorial assistant Carrie Roy.

2:15 p.m. -- Tour of reading room furniture by Ms. Townsend.

3:15 p.m. -- "Botanical Wall Charts," Ms. Bruno.

4-4:30 p.m. -- Open conversation with curators and staff.

MONDAY

Registration opens at 1 p.m.

1:15 p.m. -- Welcome and introduction in reading room, Ms. Bruno.

1:30 p.m. -- Exhibition tour, Ms. Roy.

2:15 p.m. -- Tour of reading room furniture, Ms. Townsend.

3:15 p.m. -- "From Field to Folio," Ms. McDevitt.

3:45-4:30 p.m. -- Conversation with curators and staff.

"What We Collect" continues through June 30. Admission is free. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Information: 412-268-2434 or http://huntbot.andrew.cmu.edu.

The 54th Three Rivers Arts Festival, which ended Sunday, continued to shine as a well-loved city event, drawing appreciative crowds in spite of a few bad weather days. Thanks to the dedicated sponsorship of Dollar Bank, with support by Giant Eagle and others, it remains one of the few remaining festivals of its kind in the country that is free.

As a project of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, it also continues to explore possibilities specific to the festival and those integrated with year-round trust gallery and theater venues. Under the new directorship of Veronica Corpuz, public art returned, both puzzling and engaging visitors. Each is a valid response to encourage.

The Juried Visual Art Exhibition is on solid footing, with increasingly diverse and accomplished artists submitting to a show that is now professionally presented. The Flight School Visual Art Exhibition was a new addition that deserves a return slot. Most praiseworthy is the growing involvement of the large regional arts community nurtured by the festival.

There are kinks to work out: Never enough picnic tables; how to pull the larger crowds down Liberty and Penn avenues to exhibitions like the juried show. I hear from readers who missed seeing the juried exhibition because it is no longer housed in Gateway Center pavilions or near venues like the PPG Wintergarden.

But I sense a golden futuristic vision the trust is developing of a festival that stretches from the newly effervescent fountain (and waters surrounding) through the park and down city avenues toward the convention center, with more stops than a visitor could hope to experience in one- or two-day trips. Which will draw him/her back. Again and again. It's not a bad goal to have.

First Published: June 19, 2013, 8:00 a.m.