Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, Bouquet for Mrs & Miss Ware, 1887. Ware Collection of Glass Models of Plants, Harvard Museum of Natural History
April showers bring May flowers! Join Professor Ellery Foutch on April 29 at 7 pm for “Everlasting Flowers: Botanical Models in New England Collections,” a springtime talk presented by the Henry Sheldon Museum about the study of botany in New England at the turn of the 20th century.
In this illustrated lecture, Prof. Foutch will discuss botanical models including Harvard’s famed “Glass Flowers” and a more local connection: former Middlebury College President Ezra Brainerd’s herbarium, a cabinet of pressed plants collected on walks through Addison County-- tools that informed his publications Flora of Vermont (1900) and Violets of North America (1921). The talk will be presented virtually on Zoom.
Registration is free, but please consider a donation to the Museum. To register, complete the form below.
Ellery Foutch is an Assistant Professor in the American Studies department at Middlebury College, where she teaches classes on the art and material culture of the United States. Her current spring term class mines the Sheldon’s archives for information about the early years of the Museum’s establishment, exploring institutional history, histories of collecting, and local history, alongside a critical investigation of how archives and collections are formed, developed, and made legible (or illegible) to broader publics.
Foutch received her PhD in the History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania in 2011 and has held postdoctoral teaching fellowships at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and The Courtauld Institute of Art (London). She is a Sheldon Museum trustee.