Press Release

New Gallery of Botanical Art

Opens at Kew Gardens, Spring 2008

The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens, opening in spring 2008, will be the first gallery in the world dedicated to botanical art and open to the public all year round. The gallery, designed by award-winning architects Walters and Cohen, will exhibit precious works of art from the collections of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Dr Shirley Sherwood, many of which have never been on public display before.

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew holds one of the world's greatest collections of botanical art, totalling over 200,000 items. Kew holds works by masters of botanical art such as G.D. Ehret, the Bauer Brothers and Redouté, together with nineteenth century artists such as Walter Hood Fitch, who was one of the most prolific botanical artists ever. Dr Shirley Sherwood holds one of the world's most comprehensive collections of original contemporary botanical art from over 200 artists. The new building will be linked with the nearby Marianne North Gallery, a permanent display of Victorian botanical and landscape paintings. The Link Gallery between the two buildings will always have a selection of contemporary works from the Shirley Sherwood Collection.

Many of the works in Kew 's collection require a climate-controlled environment with managed light levels. Until now, although the collection has been consulted by experts and researchers, most of the works have been kept in study collections behind the scenes. The new gallery will provide the right environment and will make Kew's collections more accessible, ensuring that the 1.3 million annual visitors to Kew Gardens can see the treasures on public display.

Dr Sherwood travels extensively and has been collecting contemporary botanical art since 1990. Her comprehensive collection includes work by artists living in thirty different countries and documents the emergence of a new wave of botanical painters and the renaissance of their art form. Arguably the most important private collection of twentieth century botanical art in the world, these art works complement Kew's own collection which has a rich heritage of eighteenth and nineteenth century illustrations as well as more recent acquisitions.

Kew's collection of botanical art includes illustrations of extinct species for which the artwork may be the only surviving record. As well as being great works of art, these historically rich illustrations are scientific tools highly valued by taxonomists, horticulturalists, and researchers alike. With one quarter of the world's species of flowering plants threatened by extinction in the next 50 years, Kew has a vital role to play to inspire and deliver science-based plant conservation. The beauty, rarity and accuracy of the images displayed in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery will raise public awareness of the beauty and fragility of the natural world.

Following the opening of the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, the Marianne North Gallery, both the building and its collections, are due to be restored and enhanced through improved interpretation, better signage and a programme of activities. This work is the subject of an application to the Heritage Lottery Fund. This beautiful space is filled floor to ceiling with a lavish collection of 832 colourful paintings by Marianne North, a Victorian amateur botanical artist, who travelled the world and left her collection to Kew. Behind the scenes, an extension to the Herbarium, Library and Archives, opening in 2009, will provide improved facilities for consulting Kew's illustrations collection.

Inaugural Exhibition: April – October 2008

A changing annual programme of three exhibitions is planned and the inaugural exhibition will combine some of the highlights from the Kew and Sherwood Collections with support from our sponsor Jonathan Cooper - Park Walk Gallery. The 2008 exhibition will aim to show the scope of the two collections and the richness of botanical art as a whole, providing an overview of the most significant artists from c1700 through to contemporary artists. A book to accompany the exhibition written by Shirley Sherwood and Martyn Rix and published by Kew Publishing will provide a richly illustrated introduction to the collections. In the autumn of 2008 the second exhibition will focus on Trees; a view of the rich legacy of illustrating trees largely through detailed specimens. Future exhibitions will celebrate a range of artists and their subjects throughout the history of botanical illustration. 

Save the date: Press Preview 10am, Wednesday 16 April 2008  

Further Information

For further information please contact the Press Office at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew . Please visit www.kew.org/press or contact pr@kew.org/ 020 8332 5607.

Images are available at www.kew.org/press/images. Please contact the RBG Kew Press Office for a username and password to download in high resolution format.

Notes to Editors

The Gallery will be open all day, as per the opening hours of the Gardens. Please see http://www.kew.org/visitor/timeskew.html

RBG Kew's Botanical Art Collection Arranged systematically by plant families, Kew's collection of botanical art, which forms part of the National Reference Collection, plays a key role in plant science research, particularly for the identification of plants. Assembled over the last 200 years, Kew holds works by the great masters of the eighteenth century, such as G. D. Ehret, the Bauer brothers and Redouté, nineteenth century artists including Walter Hood Fitch and Marianne North and by twentieth century and contemporary botanical artists such as Margaret Mee, Stella Ross-Craig and Christabel King. The collection also includes many of the original botanically precise watercolours from Curtis's Botanical Magazine dating back to 1789. Among the Library's 300,000 books and pamphlets are many lavishly illustrated and rare books dating back to 1370. In addition the archives contain the illustrated notebooks of great botanists and plant hunters including Sir William Hooker, the first Director of Kew, objets d'art, portraits, photographs and daguerreotypes.

Dr Shirley Sherwood Dr Shirley Sherwood is Editor-in-Chief of the Orient-Express Magazine. She is Vice Chairman and a judge on the Picture Committee of the Royal Horticultural Society, London; a former trustee on the Advisory Board of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew ; an honorary trustee of the American Society for Botanical Artists; a Fellow of the Linnean Society and on the Board of the Smithsonian Institution. She has written several books including Contemporary Botanical Artists: The Shirley Sherwood Collection and A Passion for Plants: Contemporary Botanical Masterworks. Parts of her collection have toured the United States including the Hunt Institute, Pittsburgh and Denver Art Museum. In 2003 she showed a hundred works at the Smithsonian in Washington which were visited by over half a million people.

Architecture The design of The Shirley Sherwood Gallery seeks to combine the needs of the collection and those of Kew's visitors. Thus, the main gallery space is a ‘box within a box' where the environment can be controlled at 50 lux and 55% relative humidity. On two sides this central space is flanked by four small gallery spaces with the same climate and light controls, each of which can be closed off without disrupting visitor flow. Displays in these spaces can be integrated with the main exhibition or used as discrete spaces for the display of ‘treasures' from Kew's collections or for regularly changing topical displays relating to current affairs or developments in plant science and conservation. The exhibition spaces, totalling 300m2, have been designed to be as flexible as possible, by using versatile display and lighting systems. Two of the external walls of the gallery space are glazed to create a welcoming and accessible reception and orientation area where prints, an Art on Demand service and some publications can be displayed. Materials have also been sensitively selected to complement and contrast with the Victorian structure of the adjacent Marianne North Gallery.

Walters and Cohen Founded in 1994 by Cindy Walters and Michál Cohen, Walters and Cohen has since grown into a dynamic and multicultural practice of talented individuals from around the world. Walters and Cohen has actively developed an international portfolio of public, education, commercial, housing and cultural projects. Walters and Cohen works closely with clients to establish an appropriate and achievable brief for every project. Detailed research into innovative building materials has resulted in an impressive portfolio of bold, contemporary and imaginative projects. www.waltersandcohen.com

Kew Publishing The publishing house of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew produces over 20 new titles each year, catering for diverse readerships, from scientists and academics to the general public of all ages. We aim to inspire and educate people about our work and to make available Kew's unique heritage and resources, knowledge and cutting edge expertise to as wide an audience as possible throughout the world. www.kewbooks.com

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Kew Gardens is a major international visitor attraction and its 132 hectares of landscaped gardens attract over one million visitors per year. Kew is a UNESCO-inscribed World Heritage Site and represents over 250 years of historical landscape. The site houses over 40 listed buildings and other structures including the Palm House, Temperate House, Orangery and Pagoda as well as two ancient monuments, Queen Charlotte's Cottage and Kew Palace. RBG, Kew is a world famous scientific organisation, internationally respected for its outstanding living collection of plants and world-class herbarium as well as its scientific expertise in plant diversity, conservation and sustainable development in the UK and around the world. www.kew.org.

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