Nuts & Bolts: Eco-Focused Exhibitions

Several museums have scheduled nature-inspired exhibitions to open alongside the blooms of spring. Three examples are The Irvine Museum in California, the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, South Carolina, and The Gallery at the Chicago Botanic Garden, all of which will celebrate the season with exhibitions ranging from impressionist landscapes, to photographs of vistas, to atypical floral paintings.

At The Irvine Museum through May 15, California's Native Grandeur includes the work of such artists as Guy Rose, Edgar Payne, William Wendt, and Maynard Dixon. Highlighting the state's seven ecological regions—the South Coast, the Central Coast, the desert, the Great Valley, the Sierra Nevada, the Shasta-Cascades, and the North Coast—the show attests to the wealth of flora and fauna indigenous to the West Coast. "California's approximately 4,300 species of flowering plants make up one-fourth of all those occurring in the United States and Canada combined, and half are endemic," explains Professor Edward O. Wilson in the show's accompanying book, which is available through the museum. "The aesthetic and spiritual value wild lands provide...are equally important to human welfare." For more information, write: The Irvine Museum, Dept. AA, 18881 Von Karman Ave., Suite 100, Irvine, CA 92612; call: (949) 476-2565; or visit: www.irvinemuseum.org.

The theme of a reciprocal relationship between human beings and nature is further explored in the Gibbes Museum of Art's Selections From In Response to Place: Photographs From The Nature Conservancy's Last Great Places exhibit, which is on display through April 24. The photographs in the show highlight examples of the 130-piece exhibit conceived by The Nature Conservancy for its 50th anniversary in 2001. The conservancy selected 12 artists and asked each to visit one of the conservancy's Last Great Places and visually respond to the experience. From Annie Leibovitz's homage to the Shawangunk Mountains of upstate New York, to Lee Friedlander's images of the San Pedro River in Arizona, the pieces in the exhibit are an inspiration. As curator Andy Grundberg explains, the show "represents a new chapter in the ongoing search to describe our place in the natural world," a search that, as Grundberg puts it, "is important not only for art as a whole but also for our lives." For more information, write: Gibbes Museum of Art, Dept. AA, 135 Meeting St., Charleston, SC 29401; call: (843) 722-2706; or visit: www.gibbes museum.org.

Through April 4, the Gallery at the Chicago Botanic Garden features a trio of exhibits dedicated to exploring nature as a muse. Botanical Metamorphics, the latest body of work by Ann Parker, features impressions of plants, flowers, and vegetables as cast onto color-sensitive paper. In addition, selections from In Search of Paradise: Centuries of Great Garden Designs is on view, showcasing gardens of Europe, Asia, North America, and the Middle East through six-foot photo-murals that trace 4,000 years of garden design. In Reflections, painter Julie Kiefer-Bell's portraits of dahlias, delphiniums, roses, and orchids add an almost haunting element to the theme of scenery as subject. Using iridescent and pearlescent paints, applied on textured papers embedded with bark and fibers, she creates evocatively toned images with an otherworldly quality. For more information, write: Chicago Botanic Garden, Dept. AA, 1000 Lake Crook Road, Glenscoe, IL 60022; call: (847) 835-5440; or visit: www .chicagobotanic.org/art.