Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation

As you know from reading the spring Bulletin, we have been moving offices in our space on the third floor of Hunt Library and going through many boxes of Institute papers. We have spent the summer organizing the remaining information, and it has been very fruitful. We have found more information about previous exhibitions held at the Institute.

We displayed Pieter Casteels' The Twelve Months of Flowers and The Twelve Months of Fruits in Botanical Prints and Drawings in 1976, likely the first time in Pittsburgh that the complete sets were shown until this year when we are showing the Fruits online each month.

We have added descriptions and checklists or catalogues for shows for which we had only names before: Ceramic Mushrooms and Other Fungi by Martha Gene Pierson Williamson, Selections from the Hunt Institute Collection and 23 Designers.

We have added a few exhibitions previously undocumented by us: Fall Flower Show: The Wonderful World of Gardens (1966), God Created; Linnaeus Arranged (1979), Ladybug Paintings by Susan Carlton Smith (1970), Orchid Watercolors by Sarah K. Berndt (1980), Palm Drawings by Alice Ruth Tangerini (1980), Ruination, Restoration, Preservation (1974) and Shakespeare's Flowers by Anne Ophelia Todd Dowden (1980).

We are slowly digitizing the invitations for every show, and the following are available now: Art Students Botanically Involved, Homegrown–Pittsburgh Artists on Plant Subjects, Homegrown II, Homegrown III and Thomas W. Patterson, Bookbinder.

We have added posters or other ephemera to the following pages: 3rd International, 4th International, American Cornucopia, American Wildflowers: National Geographic Illustrations by Mary E. Eaton and Incipit: Botanical Title-Pages, An Exhibition of Paintings by Jack J. Kunz, Artists from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Botanical Linocuts by Henry Evans, Drawings and Bronze Sculptures by Nancy Webb, Five West Coast Printmakers, Flowers of the World: Paintings by Leslie Greenwood, Jeanne Holgate: Paintings and Drawings, Paintings and Drawings by Mary Grierson, Plant Illustrations from the Smithsonian Institution, Plants Only: CMU Student Art and Reflections from the Third Day.

With the summer of organization a huge success, we embark on the fall of tidying up the Institute.