Exhibition: Plant Portraits

Posted:16 March 2010

Plant Portraits opens on 2 April at Brighton’s Booth Museum (until 24 September 2010).

Botanical artists can create images of extraordinary beauty   images that convey a plant’s technical form and structure in ways that a photograph cannot. This exhibition, curated by The Botanical Art Society of Sussex in conjunction with the Booth Museum of Natural History, highlights the importance of art in understanding and communicating the natural world and the plants that are fundamental to our survival.

Paintings include flowers, fruits, vegetables and fungi; enriching images supplemented by magnificently illustrated botanical books and specimens from the Booth Museum.

The Botanical Art Society of Sussex was founded in 2003 to bring together Sussex botanical artists. Botanical illustrators today are not just flower painters, but inheritors of a legacy of historical importance going back to the time of the ancient Egyptians. To be successful they have to be technically highly competent in drawing and painting, with some knowledge of botany and the ability to convey the sense of wonder of the plant world.

The Booth Museum was founded in 1874 by naturalist and collector Edward Thomas Booth.  The Victorians were passionate about natural history and Edward Booth’s particular interest was ornithology, the study of birds.

In 1971 the Booth became a Museum of Natural History. It is now home to a staggering collection of 525,000 insects, 50,000 minerals and rocks, 30,000 plants and 5,000 microscopic slides.

Today the museum retains its unique charm of the quirky and eccentric with its focus on Victorian taxidermy and fossils, bones and skeletons.  And yet it is also firmly focused on modern day concerns of conservation and protection of the planet.

It is truly a fascinating and unique place to visit…

Booth Museum of Natural History, 194 Dyke Road, 
Brighton BN1 5AA

Tel. 03000 290900 / Email visitor.services@brighton-hove.gov.uk