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Brooklyn Botanic Garden 2003 Annual Report
Public Programs
The year's events at the Garden began in January with BBG's annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration. It featured a moving program of spirituals, chamber music, and theater, put together by Louvinia Pointer, director and founder of the Great Day Chorale.
In March, BBG hosted the Plant Society Expo, a gathering of regional chapters of six top plant societies, including the North American Rock Garden Society and the American Gloxinia and Gesneriad Society. Plant experts were on hand to answer visitors' questions and talk to them about the benefits of joining their organizations.
Sakura Matsuri immersed BBG visitors in the cultural traditions of Japan and its cherry-blossom season. Highlights included a martial arts demonstration by Stanton Street Settlement and a dazzling display of ikebana flower arrangements.
More than 39,500 visitors poured into the Garden in late April for Sakura Matsuri, the cherry-blossom festival. Good weather on Sunday set the stage for the largest single-day admission for any event in BBG history. In addition to perennial Sakura favorites like taiko drumming, ikebana demonstrations, and bonsai workshops, there was a new lineup of performances, exhibitions, and activities. Highlights included a samurai sword-fighting drama by Samurai Sword Soul. Children were treated to a performance of the Japanese fable "The Fisherman and the Tortoise," by the Saeko Ichinohe Dance Company. Artisans from Ito En, the world's largest purveyor of green tea, taught visitors about the cultivation of tea plants, the health benefits of drinking green tea, and proper tea-brewing techniques.
Visitors from as far away as Pennsylvania and Maine came to the Garden in May and June for the Springfest series of Sunday concerts that ran from Mother's Day to Father's Day, Time Out New York, WFUV Radio, and Museums New York provided media support for the event, which included performances by Grammy-award-winning bluesman John Hammond, folk-rocker Toshi Regan, and roots artist Lucy Kaplansky. More than 24,000 visitors enjoyed the concerts, as well as a poetry series with Poet's House, a screening of the film Pale Male, guided tours of the BBG Florilegium Society art exhibit, and more.
In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Cranford Rose Garden, BBG organized a month of rose-related activities. June Is Rose Month kicked off on Sunday, June 1, with an afternoon of guided tours, readings of Shakespeare's rose-themed prose and poetry by the American Globe Theatre, and rose-inspired music from the chamber ensembles Quartet Botanica and the Brooklyn Chamber Players. During the month, families enjoyed Discovery Cart workshops and a special storytelling hour dedicated to the flower.
Other summer programs at BBG included the 26th annual Jin Nyodo Concert, a memorial tribute to one of Japan's most famous bamboo-flute players. In early September, the Brooklyn Chamber Players returned to perform music by Bach, Mozart, Handel, and Brahms in the annual Milton and Hilda Berlin Memorial Concert.
The Garden's fall-events series got under way in mid-September with the annual Harvest Fair, which recognizes the efforts of the young gardeners in the Children's Garden and community gardeners in urban areas. Despite rain, more than 1,500 visitors of all ages came to the Garden and enjoyed bluegrass music by the Fiddleheads, square dancing, a vintage tractor display, an exhibition of fall-themed quilts, and a fresh produce sale.
Rain also fell on BBG's annual Chile Pepper Fiesta, but it didn't deter the thousands of visitors who came to the Garden for a day of spicy food, music, and activities honoring the fruit. Sponsored by Con Edison and given promotional support by Q104.3 Radio, the event featured BBG's first "bal de maison," or Cajun house-dance party, with a musical performance by acoustic group Les Frères Michot and a lesson in two-step dancing by the Cajun Chile Hotsteppers. Other performers included the José Moura Trio, a Brazilian jazz group, and the C.A.S.Y.M. Steel Orchestra, a group of Brooklyn teens. Eighty-year-old master choreographer Ione Nash performed with her ensemble and led an Afro-Caribbean stretch workshop for seniors.
Ione Nash, 80-year-old founder of the Ione Nash Ensemble, electrified seniors with her colorful Afro-Caribbean dance workshop during the Chile Pepper Fiesta.
More than 7,300 kids of all ages attended the annual Ghouls and Gourds Halloween celebration. Visitors enjoyed wacky songs and groovy moves from Jonathan Bayer and the Acoustic Rooster Band, the Raymond Scott Orchestrette, and the Lost Bayou Ramblers. Other highlights included a workshop in Brazilian body-percussion led by Macacatu NY, a freaky flea circus, a haunted house in the Children's Garden, and a costume parade through the Garden. BBG also became a post office for the day when artist Steve Buchanan arrived to autograph custom-canceled U.S. Postal Service stamps illustrated with his creepy-crawly art.
In December, BBG's second annual Winter Celebration featured winter-themed activities for the entire family, including readings and theatrical renditions of Walt Whitman's nature poems by members of the Walt Whitman Project and a tour by artist Deborah Schenck of her exhibit "Nature's Celebration." Children were able to see a puppet performance of "The Snow Maiden," join in an origami demonstration, hear a dulcimer concert, and participate in a winter greens discovery workshop.
Steinhardt Conservatory Gallery
Throughout the year, the Conservatory Gallery hosted a series of art exhibits in diverse mediums and styles. Exhibits ranged from the charming vintage horticultural posters collected by Gail Chisholm of Manhattan's Chisholm Gallery, to Steve Buchanan's life-like digital renderings of carnivorous plants produced for the U.S. Postal Service. Other exhibitions included Barbara Bordnick's color portraits from her new photography book, Searchings: Secret Landscapes of Flowers, Todd Stone's large canvases of water-lilies, the mysterious black and white landscape photographs of Anne Arden McDonald, Deborah Schenck's whimsical flower collages, and a site-specific installation piece by abstract sculptor Barbara WF Miner. One of the year's most exciting shows was the first exhibit by the newly formed Brooklyn Botanic Garden Florilegium Society. The exhibit ran from April through June and featured drawings and paintings of living plants from the Garden's collection by 43 renowned botanical artists.