For Immediate Release
The Flowering Amazon
Margaret Mee Paintings from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
(Milwaukee) The Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, will host the international traveling exhibition The Flowering Amazon: Margaret Mee Paintings from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, beginning September 8, 2005 and continuing through December 4, 2005. On loan from The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, this exhibition, of work by Margaret Mee, bridges the worlds of art, science, and conservation through the luminous botanical art and acute scientific observations of Margaret Mee. The exhibition will open Thursday September 8th, at 6 p.m. with a lecture given by Ruth L. A. Stiff, guest curator of the exhibition. A reception will follow the lecture at 7 p.m.
The Exhibition
Featuring 30 spectacular watercolor drawings by Margaret Mee, the exhibition will also showcase field sketches, diaries, and native Brazilian artifacts from her Amazonian expeditions as well as specimens from the Kew Herbarium. Mee’s exquisite paintings of orchids, bromeliads, and other Amazonian plants have been widely praised for both their scientific clarity and their striking artistic beauty. Her art combines meticulous observation and detailed scientific accuracy with elegant composition and confident handling of plant structure.
“Increasingly in contemporary art, there is a return to an interest in nature. This exhibit will provide visually rich examples that reflect the current trend of artists renewed interest in nature,” said Dr. Curtis Carter, director of the Haggerty.
Ruth L. A. Stiff, exhibition curator, believes that “these extraordinary paintings have a special power to convey the beauty of Amazonia and enable us to understand why this outstanding lady inspired so many scientists, conservationists, and artists to take up the cause of protecting our fragile planet and its life-supporting flora.”
Margaret Mee first began her Amazonian journeys in 1956, at the age of 47, and completed 15 expeditions over the course of three decades. Braving sickness, danger, stifling heat, storms, and isolation, she observed and painted native plants in their natural habitat and discovered several previously unknown species that now bear her name.
Paddling long distances in small, dugout canoes with a single Indian guide, Mee would often live for weeks with the Tucano Indians, sharing their food and garnering information about the trees and plants she encountered on her journeys. Scientifically, no equivalent record of Amazonian plants has ever been created. Her remarkable watercolors include the only record of certain plants, many of which may now be extinct.
According to Stiff, the exhibition seeks not only to inspire visitors with the beauty of Mee’s botanical art, but also to educate about: conservation of irreplaceable ecosystems, biodiversity, botanical research, and current scientific efforts in the Amazon. New York Botanical Garden scientists continue to actively study this botanically diverse and little-known area of the world.
Margaret Mee: Artist and Explorer
A supremely gifted artist, a dedicated botanist, and an intrepid explorer, Margaret Ursula Mee (1909–1988) was uniquely qualified to record the lush wilderness of the vanishing Amazon.
Mee is considered the premier female explorer of the Amazonian rain forest. But Amazonia was a world away from the life that Mee knew growing up in the English countryside. As an adult, she attended the prestigious Camberwell School of Art, where she learned the importance of painting from life, keen observation, and careful rendering of detail. In 1952, she moved to Brazil with her husband, Greville Mee.
A passionate conservationist, Mee was one of the first to raise a voice against the destruction and exploitation of the Amazon. Her expeditions to Amazonia occurred during a time of momentous change. In the 1960s, Brazil built the Trans-Amazon Highway and opened the area to farming, ranching, mining, and hydroelectric projects. These influences resulted in unprecedented deforestation, culminating in massive destruction during the 1970s and 1980s. With courage and disregard for personal safety, Mee challenged indiscriminate deforestation and became one of Amazonia’s foremost defenders.
After surviving many hardships in the rain forest, Margaret Mee was killed in a car accident in England on November 30, 1988. Her paintings are today distributed throughout the world in private and public collections. Having witnessed over several decades the steady erosion of the Amazon forests, Mee realized that her paintings would eventually become important as a record of a natural world that was destined for irrevocable change.
The Haggerty Museum of Art is located at North 13th St. and West Clybourn Avenue on the campus of Marquette University. Museum hours are Monday - Wednesday, Friday - Saturday, 10 am-4:30 p.m.; Thursday, 10 am-8 p.m.; and Sunday, noon-5 p.m.. Free parking is available in the Mary B. Finnigan Parking Lot (enter on 11th St. through Marquette Lot J). For more information on the Haggerty Museum call (414) 288-3657.