Friday, April 26, 2024

Marie Selby Botanical Gardens: Art & Nature

 




In the mid-1950s, Yayoi Kusama was a young artist living in Japan, where her future was very uncertain. Seeking advice from a more established female artist, Kusama wrote to Georgia O’Keeffe, whose work she greatly admired but whom she had never met. To Kusama’s surprise, O’Keeffe responded, thus establishing a correspondence that gave the young Japanese artist the courage to move to America and pursue her career in New York City, which was then the centre of the art world. Kusama’s decision, with O’Keeffe’s encouragement, forever changed the course of modern art history. The exhibition explores the mentoring relationship between Kusama and O'Keeffe.

Yayoi Kusama: A Letter to Georgia O’Keeffe examines the work of these two major artists through the lens of their connection to nature. The exhibition, which is on view until June 2024, explores the unexpected yet profoundly impactful mentoring relationship that developed between the iconic artists Kusama and O’Keeffe, and explores the ways in which the work of both artists is rooted in nature, befitting an art and horticultural experience set in a botanical garden.



The new Marie Selby Welcome Centre launched this year

'Dot Matrix' features golden barrel cacti suspended upside down at the Marie Selby Welcome Centre,
as part of the current exhibition 'Yayoi Kusama: A Letter to Georgia O’Keeffe'

Entrance to the current 'Yayoi Kusama: A Letter to Georgia O’Keeffe' exhibition

'Moments of Levity' installation inspired by Yayoi Kusama, features small grey pebble flowers 
depicted as a polka dot garden

'Shear Repetion' features a footpath of circular stepping stones leading to a quiet bench amid 
a garden of spherical topiaries

Meandering boardwalk through the mangroves

'Emmeshed in Nature' features red bromeliads

The maze of red bromeliads 'emmeshed in nature'

'Tillandsia Tunnel' features hundreds of tillandsias in nets suspended from Ficus trees

The exquisite outdoor Schimmel Wedding Pavilion

Pink Trumpet from Argentina

Staghorn Fern
 which branch out to look like antlers

Ball Cactus in the Desert Garden

Desert 'Triple Star' Rose

Giant Ficus tree wth great undulating root structure

The Ann Goldstein Children’s Rainforest Garden and Educational Treehouse

Cascading Waterfall

The serene Koi pond

Buddhist statue overlooks the Koi Pond

Zamia Floridana flower from Florida and the West Indies

Beautiful wild flower 

The Pitcher Plant is a carnivorous plant that have modified leaves known as pitfall traps, 
a prey-trapping mechanism featuring a deep cavity filled with digestive liquid

Beautiful pink and orange orchid

Glass balls appearing to float on water surrounded by Koi, carry on Yayoi Kusama's signature use of polka dots in the Tropical Conservatory

































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