The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens, opening in spring 2008, will be the first public gallery in the world dedicated to botanical art. The state-of-the-art gallery, designed by award-winning architects Walters and Cohen, will exhibit 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.
Cindy Walters from London-based architecture firm Walters and Cohen commented, “It is a wonderful privilege to design a building that will host one of the world’s greatest collections of botanical art. The 200,000 strong collection is hugely important globally, both scientifically and artistically, and some of the artworks portray species which are now extinct and may be the only surviving record.
“Many of the artworks are extremely light-sensitive and require a climate-controlled environment, so we have paid particular attention to designing a building that will protect these unique works, as well as providing a welcoming and flexible space that visitors will enjoy for many years to come.”
Professor Stephen Hopper, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, said, “The gallery will make Kew’s and Shirley Sherwood’s collection of contemporary botanical art accessible to the over 1.3 million people who visit Kew Gardens annually. These great works of art will be of interest to the general public, but they are also scientific tools highly valued by taxonomists, horticulturalists, historians and researchers alike.
“These artworks will provide opportunities to tell stories of individual plants from around the world. With a significant proportion 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.”
Until now, although the Kew collection has been consulted by experts and researchers, most of the works have been kept in study collections behind the scenes. Some works have rarely, if ever, been seen by the public and to this day, they are still used for scientific purposes in preference to photography, because drawing is capable of demonstrating the entire lifecycle of a plant – from seed to bud to flower – from various viewpoints.
In 2004 Walters and Cohen was commissioned by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, through a framework agreement, to design the Gallery. The practice has worked closely with Kew to create an elegant building that is energy efficient, highly innovative, appropriate to this historically important and sensitive site, and future-proofed to adapt as needs change. The 300m2 of exhibition space provides versatile display and lighting systems.
Visitors approach the new gallery via gentle steps and a ramp. Materials have been sensitively selected to complement and contrast with the Victorian structure of the adjacent Marianne North Gallery, which contains a unique display of botanical and landscape paintings by the renowned Victorian artist and explorer.
The architect has maximised internal space within the gallery, creating a ‘box within a box’ configuration which provides visitors with views across the beautiful surrounding gardens of Kew, whilst maintaining a controlled internal environment (50 lux and 55% relative humidity) to protect the fragile artworks. The main central gallery space is flanked by four small galleries with the same climate and light controls, each of which can be closed off without disrupting visitor flow. The displays in these spaces can be integrated with the main exhibition or used as discrete areas for the display of ‘treasures’ from Kew’s collections or for regularly changing topical displays. High level glazing in the central gallery features retractable black-out blinds that run on an environmentally-controlled system, providing visitors with a view into the night sky during private views and events, and if there is a need for less environmentally sensitive exhibitions.
The new gallery pavilion has been carefully sited in the landscape between two significant TROBI (Tree Register of the British Isles) trees. The scale and proportion of the new gallery is driven by the architectural language of the adjacent building and this precisely detailed gem will make a valuable contribution to the important architectural heritage at Kew Gardens.
Inaugural Exhibition: ‘Treasures of Botanical Art’ - April 2008 – 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. The 2008 exhibition will 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 the present day with support from our sponsor Jonathan Cooper - Park Walk Gallery.
A book to accompany the exhibition written by Dr Shirley Sherwood and Martyn Rix and published by Kew Publishing will accompany the exhibition and provide an introduction to the collections.
Future exhibitions include one in the autumn of 2008 that will focus on contemporary and historic images of trees, followed by a special exhibition to celebrate Kew’s 250th anniversary in 2009 and an exhibition called ‘The Art of Plant Evolution’ based on a new publication by Dr Shirley Sherwood and Professor John Kress.
Save the date: Press Preview 10am, Wednesday 16 April 2008
Notes to Editors
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’ 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.
The Kew collection will be complemented by Dr Sherwood’s collection which includes almost 700 works by more than 200 artists and is the most important private collection of 20th century botanical art in the world. Dr Sherwood travels extensively and has been collecting contemporary botanical drawings since 1990. Her 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.
Dr Shirley Sherwood
Dr Shirley Sherwood is Editor-in-Chief of the Orient-Express Magazine, 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 world in 17 exhibitions, including the Hunt Institute, Pittsburgh and Denver Art Museum. In 2003 she showed over 100 works at the Smithsonian in Washington which was visited by over half a million people.
Walters & 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 with an international portfolio of public, education, commercial, housing and cultural projects. The practice works closely with clients to establish an appropriate and achievable brief for every project.
Walters and Cohen’s work is underpinned by a passionate belief in the importance of design excellence. A thorough, demanding and rational design approach is evident in the material quality of the buildings completed by the practice, which combine intellectual rigor with a sensual appreciation of space, light and materiality. Detailed research into innovative building materials has resulted in an impressive portfolio of bold, contemporary and imaginative projects.
Walters and Cohen has received several RIBA awards; in 2005 for the visitor centre at Wakehurst Place, West Sussex, in 2006 for new teaching and administration buildings at Bedales School, and in 2007 for Redbrook Hayes Community Primary School and Library in Rugeley, Staffordshire. Current projects include the Hampstead lido in London and a primary school in Wembley. Recently Walters and Cohen has been appointed by the DfES to develop a ‘standard layout and dimensions’ for WCs in schools.
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 was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2003 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.
Marianne North Gallery
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 Art and other paper collections.