Loads of different exhibitions in this museum. Animals from all periods of history and all continents. Sea creatures in glass, an exhibition on shark biology and behaviour, and New England Forests. Two exhibitions stand out. “In Search of Thoreau’s Flowers: An Exploration of Change and Loss”, is an exhibition inspired by Thoreau’s “Walden” with artwork of the plants in the Herbaria collection, cyanotypes and digitized specimens, sending back to the loss of natural diversity. Then “Glass Flowers: The Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants”. Glass flowers make me think of the glasswork done on Murano, often tacky, made for tourists. The flowers here have nothing to do with this. They are real reproductions of specimens made for teaching botany. These were made by a father and son, the Blashkas, from 1886 to 1936, with 4’300 models representing 780 plant species. It’s bluffing, difficult to fathom that this is glass. Really incredible.
“We need the tonic of wildness… At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. Walden, Henry Thoreau. “