In 2017, a pivotal time in the Anthropocene and our planet’s trajectory, a team of artists and scientists banded together to challenge the way we think about climate change. In Search of Thoreau’s Flowers is an immersive, multidisciplinary exhibition that marries art, science, and the humanities through a modern, artistic interpretation of Henry David Thoreau’s preserved plants.
The installation considers the impacts of climate change on plants around Walden Pond over the arc of one-hundred-and-twenty years. The installation draws attention to the responses plants are having to environmental change, through cyanotypes, data visualization, soundscapes, and projected augmented reality.The exhibition opened at the Harvard Museum of Natural History in May 2022 and will remain on display through November 2023. The project’s key players are artists, Leah Sobsey and Robin Vuchnich, scientists, Dr. Charles Davis and Dr. Emily Meineke, and humanist, Dr. Marsha Gordon
Leah Sobsey, with a multidisciplinary artistic approach that draws on science, design, photography, installation and textile, looks at specimens from Thoreau’s Herbarium both in decline and thriving today. Thoreau was an enthusiastic collector of botanical samples, which document the world before the intensification of human influence on plant communities, indicative of how the biosphere is responding to climate change. In this exhibition, as an homage to 19th century photographer and botanist, Anna Atkins, a contemporary of Thoreau’s, Sobsey focuses on cyanotype with its distinctive Prussian blue tone. She works with this early, 19 th century photographic printing process, combining it with contemporary modes of production that include digital technology and contemporary and large-scale wallpaper. Her installation takes the form of a series of four blue/gilded plant portraits, and a blue and white, checkered, floor to ceiling wallpaper.
“The Fall of the Leaf” portraits utilize four of the specimens in the most severe decline at Walden Pond. The endangered plants are: Whorled Milkwort , Blue-bead Lily, Woodland Sunflower, and Wavy Leaf Aster. These works incorporate both cyanotype and gold leaf as a way to elevate the plants, honor the specimens and preserve what is being lost. The reflective gold surface acts as a mirror, the viewer reflected in the artwork as well as the world around them. The cyanotypes are printed directly onto glass in reference to glass-plate photographic negatives dating back as far as the mid-1800’s. They also refer to the 19th century, oval, gilded portrait paintings of Thoreau’s time period.
In “The Dispersion of Seeds,” Sobsey uses all of the 648 digitized Thoreau specimens located at Harvard’s Gray Herbarium in the creation of the exhibition’s wallpaper. Harvard’s digitization of these specimens has expanded access beyond the scientific community, facilitating creative partnerships such as this one. Using Robin Vuchnich’s data visualization as a guide, the dark cyan color represents the specimens in decline, while the light cyan represents specimens surviving and/or thriving. Close to 65% of species from Thoreau’s records are now endangered or extinct, in large part due to human-driven changes in the environment. The tiled wallpaper speaks to the integration of digital and analog technology as a tool for image making and data sharing, as it intermingles original cyanotypes and digital imagery. In Search of Thoreau’s Flowers invites visitors to experience emotionally resonant connections to the profound loss of natural diversity caused by human-induced climate change. It urges us to reflect on the beauty of the natural world, calling attention to our collective need to protect and restore it.
