This is a weekly series sharing places and experiences that we love.
The Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation is one of the gems in Pittsburgh’s cultural crown that is not as well known here as it is internationally.
An international resource for scholars and scientists that is located on the Carnegie Mellon University campus, it also regularly mounts exhibitions of botanical works that are open free to the public.
While some of the works exhibited are as formally precise as an historic herbarium sheet, others are flamboyantly contemporary by comparison.
With its wood-paneled walls, softened lighting and quietude, the Institute provides relief from our fast-paced and overstimulating contemporary surround. And it has the added bonus of offering a connection with nature at a time when people are looking at the healing properties of plants both visual and medicinal.
One of the Institute’s most notable achievements was the establishment of the triennial “International Exhibition of Botanical Art & Illustration” exhibitions in 1964. The 16th iteration opened in September and continues through Dec. 18.
As the title implies, the exhibition draws international participants and coincides with the American Society of Botanical Artists educational conference which is held in Pittsburgh during exhibition years.
The 16th comprises 41 artworks by 41 artists who reside in 14 countries: Australia, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Scotland, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, the United States and Wales.
Plants represented this year range from exotic Nepenthes (the dangling pitcher plants of Southeast Asia and Australia) to the seedpods of money plants found in many Pittsburgh gardens. Media include watercolor, graphite, pen and ink, colored pencil, acrylic and even an engraving on wood.
I’m always amazed at how meticulous many of the artists are, practicing a blend of artist’s creativity and crafter’s fastidiousness. A friend who is an illustrator for a university herbarium may take up to two weeks to create a sheet representing the various components of a collected specimen. She often uses a microscope to see details resuscitated in a fluid-filled petri dish while drawing with a finely-pointed pencil.
I’d imagine it took many weeks for native Clare McGhee to draw “Blown Thistle, Spear Thistle,” the Scottish national flower gone to seed. The 30-inch by 22-inch graphite work, among those shown in the International, is as impeccable as a photograph and as detailed as an image from an electron microscope.
That and images of all other 2019 international works may be seen on the institute website, www.huntbotanical.org. The exhibition print catalog is for sale at the Institute ($25) as is a selection of botanically themed note cards.
Current Institute web exhibitions are “Virtues and Pleasures of Herbs through History: Physic, Flavor, Fragrance and Dye,” and one about Carolus Linnaeus, the father of modern biological nomenclature.
The Hunt has four programmatic departments: archives, art, bibliography and the library.
The art collection is one of the world's largest and most broadly representative with over 30,000 original works – paintings (mostly watercolors), drawings and original prints – dating from the Renaissance onward.
The Library contains more than 30,000 titles ranging from botanical publications from the late 1400s that focus on the development of botany as a science to modern taxonomic monographs and other publications.
The Institute is located on the fifth floor of the Hunt Library. Hours are 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday (closed Nov. 28-29). Because the library is on the university calendar, visitors are advised to call ahead to confirm hours or changing exhibition dates at 412-268-2434.
First Published: November 21, 2019, 5:00 a.m.
