Until April 20th, 2024 at the Lloyd Library & Museum in Cincinnati, USA, Flora Mania celebrates the rich history of botanical illustration through the lens of the Lloyd’s robust collection. The exhibition will present and interrogate centuries of scientific and artistic responses to the world of flowers, with particular attention to environmental sustainability, the legacy of colonialism, and the artistic impulse to capture their beauty.

There is broad scientific consensus that flowers generate happiness by inspiring optimism and lowering stress. The Flora Mania exhibition invites visitors to experience and celebrate flowers’ transformative power by gazing at the glorious bounty of botanicals. See page after page explode with riotous color and sublime compositions in over 300 years of international floral book illustration.

Highlights include an 1805 botanical by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, illustrated by Marie Antoinette’s official court artist, Pierre-Joseph Redouté; Hooker’s Illustrations of Himalayan Plants (1855) drawn by Walter Hood Fitch and a team of native artists; Georg Ehret’s hand-colored illustrations in Christoph Jakob Trew’s Plantae Selectae (1750-1773), often considered Germany’s greatest botanical; and the mighty Flora Graeca (1806-1840), perhaps the most splendid and expensive flora ever produced, which the Oxford Bodleian Library describes as their “finest botanical treasure.”

Flora Mania programming spanning winter and spring includes in-person and virtual programs on flowers in extreme weather, flower extinction, pollination, a nature hike, and more as:

Saving All Flowers from Extinction Wednesday, January 17th, 2024, with Dr. Valerie Pence, the Director of Plant Research at the Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife (CREW) at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden. Her work focuses on applying in vitro methods and cryo-biotechnologies to the conservation of plant species.

The Sweetness of Honey Wednesday, February 7th, 2024, with a panel discussion with local experts on their work with keeping and honey. The panel is made up of Dr. Geen Kritsky (world-renowned entomologist), Jenny O’Donnell (co-founder of the Queen City Pollinator Project), and Brandon Reynolds (local beekeeper and naturalist).

The Flowering Times, They are a ’Changin’ Wednesday, February 21st, 2024, with Dr. Kellen Callinger-Yoak, BS in Biology from West Virginia University and PhD in Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology at The Ohio State University (OSU) where she is now an Assistant Professor.

More info: https://lloydlibrary.org/