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Brooklyn Botanic Garden 2005 Annual Report
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The BBG Library created exhibits during 2004–05 that were showcases for science, education, and horticulture. From September 18 through November 14, 2004, "Portraits of a Garden 2004," an exhibit of new work by Florilegium Society artists, was on display in the Steinhardt Conservatory Gallery, and an online version was created for BBG's website. The Florilegium Society was established in 2000 to document plants growing in the Garden and to further science through the art of botanical illustration. BBG trustee Francesca Anderson received a Garden Club of America Horticultural Arts Award for her work in founding the society. Its members are artists from throughout the United States who create artworks that illustrate the plant collections of Brooklyn Botanic Garden. They then donate their work to the Garden; the resulting collection is known as the Florilegium. As of June 30, 2005, Florilegium Society artists had donated 104 artworks to BBG.
A second exhibit, "Banks' Florilegium: An Eighteenth-Century Botanical Art Treasure Rediscovered," opened on February 26, 2005, captivating visitors during its six-week run. The engravings of this florilegium, printed in color, depict 743 of the 1,000 or more new species discovered by Sir Joseph Banks and Daniel Carl Solander during the first voyage of Captain James Cook around the world, in 1768–71. BBG is one of the few public institutions in the United States that owns a set of these historically important engravings; they were donated in 2003 by the estate of Robert H. Duenner.
Banks' Florilegium—BBG is one of the few public institutions in the United States that owns a complete set of these historically important engravings. They were donated in 2003 by the estate of Robert H. Duenner.
The February exhibit included herbarium specimens, rare books, and 36 of the 743 engravings. Many of the selected engravings echoed living plants in BBG's conservatories and dried plants from its herbarium. Specimens collected during the 1768–71 voyage of the Endeavour, on loan from the herbaria of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and the New York Botanical Garden, were also featured in the exhibit. Another highlight was "An 18th-Century Naturalist's Library," a display of rare books from BBG's collection similar to those in Joseph Banks's library aboard the Endeavour.
One treasure in the Garden's rare book collection is now seeing the light of day through the Internet. The Library's 1495 edition of Liber ruralium commodorum (Book of Rural Profits), by Piero de'Crescenzi, last had a public viewing in 1935. The most important treatise on agriculture of its time, it was featured among 186 works in "Books and Manuscripts Illustrating the History of Botany," exhibited for the Garden's 25th anniversary celebration. BBG's first director, Charles Stuart Gager, wrote in the exhibit's catalog that "acquaintance with these books and their authors is absolutely essential for a first hand knowledge of the history of botany, and to enable one to consider the present status of botanical science in scholarly perspective." That is as true today, and digital tools are making it possible for fragile books like Crescenzi's to be available to scholars worldwide. The Library worked with project staff of Catena, the Digital Archive of Historic Gardens and Landscapes, to create a searchable database of illustrations and text from BBG's Renaissance-era edition of Liber ruralium commodorum. BBG is one of five participating institutions in the Catena archive.
In November 2004, the New York State Council on the Arts awarded BBG a grant to support the photographing and digitizing of botanical paintings by Maud Purdy, the Garden's staff artist from 1913 to 1944. Among Purdy's most original and visually arresting works are 24 gouache paintings on black board.
In November 2004, the New York State Council on the Arts awarded BBG a grant to support the photographing and digitizing of botanical paintings by Maud Purdy, the Garden's staff artist from 1913 to 1944. Among Purdy's most original and visually arresting works are 24 gouache paintings on black board. Purdy also produced 40 paintings of iris, several of which were exhibited at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, and pen-and-ink illustrations of plants collected during the 1930 Astor expedition to the Galápagos.
The Library added more than 800 titles to its catalog between July 1, 2004, and June 30, 2005, bringing the total number of volumes in the catalog to 43,226. We estimate that we will have added an additional 15,000 to 20,000 volumes to this count upon completion of serial retrospective conversion. A measure of our success at making the collection of current interest to patrons are the 335 new titles that were published in 2004 or 2005. The number of visitors and information requests handled by Library Services during the year was 7,031, or an average of 586 a month.