This Weekend: NYBG Honors History’s Groundbreakers
Posted in Exhibitions on May 16 2014, by Lansing Moore
Beginning tomorrow, we throw open the gates to America’s grand estates in Groundbreakers: Great American Gardens and the Women Who Designed Them. This show examines early 20th-century America’s boom in garden culture, with groundbreaking women leading the charge in the fields of landscape architecture, design, and photography.
The centerpiece of this exciting exhibit—a must for aficionados of historic homes and gardens—is Mrs. Rockefeller’s Garden in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. This interpretation of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden in Maine evokes one of the most stunning properties designed by Beatrix Farrand, one of the Groundbreakers examined in the show. Farrand, along with Marian Coffin and Ellen Shipman, represents a pivotal moment in history, from the end of the Gilded Age to the height of the Jazz Age. Their lives, times, and careers will be the subject of exhibition components throughout the Garden grounds.
For a taste of what’s in store, check out Edward Rothstein’s latest write-up of our brand new summer exhibition in The New York Times. Read on for the full list of this weekend’s programs surrounding Groundbreakers, including all-new children’s activities and plenty of musical interludes!
Saturday, May 17
Garden Photography Encounters — 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
In the Conservatory Courtyard
Learn how to compose a beautiful image by honing important elements of design and style used by the photographers featured in the exhibition.
Bird Walk — 11 a.m.
Meet at the Reflecting Pool at the Leon Levy Visitor Center
The diverse habitats of the Botanical Garden offer visitors a chance to see dozens of species of birds throughout the year. Bring your binoculars and walk the Garden grounds with an expert to learn about bird-friendly habitats, migrating species, and birds that make a permanent home at the Garden. Also look out for butterflies looking for nectar in the Garden’s flowers.
Film Screening: Yours for a Song: The Women of Tin Pan Alley — 11 a.m.
In the Ross Hall
Many popular music standards of the Tin Pan Alley era (1920–49) were written by women, including Dorothy Fields, Kay Swift, Dana Suesse, and Ann Ronell, who were among the most influential songwriters of the time. This PBS documentary includes archival footage, motion picture clips, and rarely seen photographs, as well as performance clips of Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and Perry Como.
Azalea Garden Tour — 12:30 p.m.
Meet at the Reflecting Pool at the Leon Levy Visitor Center
Join us for a guided tour of the 11-acre site that offers an encyclopedic collection of the world’s azaleas planted along a broad hillside punctuated by rock outcrops and shaded by mature native trees.
Opening Weekend Lecture with Curator Sam Watters: Picturing a Beautiful America — 1 p.m.
In the Ross Hall
As guardians of home and community, women in 1900 launched the Garden Beautiful movement, a response to the environmental wreckage of the industrial Gilded Age. Confident that new landscape design and horticulture could green America back to beauty, they founded garden clubs and hired professional photographers to publicize their hopeful message. With spectacular colored slides not seen since 1930, Sam Watters presents a virtual tour of estate gardens, East and West, as seen through the eyes and lenses of three pioneering photojournalists who used new camera technologies and the rise of photo-editorials in national magazines to define and interpret the new American garden. Non-Member $30/Member $5, Advance tickets recommended.
Historian Sam Watters writes and lectures about American house and garden culture, with a particular focus on the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His books include Houses of Los Angeles, 1885-1935 and Gardens for a Beautiful America, 1895-1935. Mr. Watters is curator of Gardens for a Beautiful America: The Women Who Photographed Them, on view at the LuEsther T. Mertz Library.
Native Plant Garden Tour — 2:30 p.m.
Meet at the Reflecting Pool at the Leon Levy Visitor Center
Join a tour guide for an insider’s view of the newly designed Native Plant Garden. Enjoy a mosaic of nearly 100,000 native trees, wildflowers, ferns and grasses designed to flourish in every season.
From Ragtime to Jazz: The Roots of Pop — 3:30 p.m.
In the Ross Hall
Music from the period of Groundbreakers—ragtime, jazz, Broadway, and beyond to Hollywood—had a great impact on American culture. Enjoy a variety of styles in live performances by a trio of artists, including musical producer, pianist, and historian Terry Waldo, featuring the works of Scott Joplin, Eubie Blake, Irving Berlin, and Tin Pan Alley composers such as George Gershwin, George M. Cohan, and Dorothy Fields.
About the artists:
Terry Waldo is a virtuoso ragtime, stride, and blues pianist, as well as a vocalist and composer. The protégé of the legendary Eubie Blake, he has produced over 50 albums while performing throughout the world, and is currently teaching courses on early jazz and ragtime piano for Jazz at Lincoln Center. His book, This is Ragtime, is now available with a new introduction by Wynton Marsalis. He regularly performs in New York at several prestigious venues.
Equally at home as both leader and sideman, Dan Levinson’s roster of musical associates includes Mel Tormé, Wynton Marsalis, Dick Hyman, and Leon Redbone. He has been featured on over 100 albums, producing nine of his own, and can be heard on the soundtracks to Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator and the Grammy Award-winning HBO television series Boardwalk Empire—to name only two.
Tamar Korn, Brooklyn-based singer for The Brain Cloud, plays a repertoire steeped in traditional New Orleans jazz, western swing, and American roots music. Skilled in both lyrical and “instrumental” vocals, she has toured across North America, Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Sunday, May 18
Garden Photography Encounters — 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
In the Conservatory Courtyard
Learn how to compose a beautiful image by honing important elements of design and style used by the photographers featured in the exhibition.
Meet at the Reflecting Pool at the Leon Levy Visitor Center
Join us for a guided tour of the 11-acre site that offers an encyclopedic collection of the world’s azaleas planted along a broad hillside punctuated by rock outcrops and shaded by mature native trees.
From Ragtime to Jazz: The Roots of Pop — 1 & 3:30 p.m.
In the Ross Hall
Music from the period of Groundbreakers—ragtime, jazz, Broadway, and beyond to Hollywood—had a great impact on American culture. Enjoy a variety of styles in live performances by a trio of artists, including musical producer, pianist, and historian Terry Waldo, featuring the works of Scott Joplin, Eubie Blake, Irving Berlin, and Tin Pan Alley composers such as George Gershwin, George M. Cohan, and Dorothy Fields.
About the artists:
Terry Waldo is a virtuoso ragtime, stride, and blues pianist, as well as a vocalist and composer. The protégé of the legendary Eubie Blake, he has produced over 50 albums while performing throughout the world, and is currently teaching courses on early jazz and ragtime piano for Jazz at Lincoln Center. His book, This is Ragtime, is now available with a new introduction by Wynton Marsalis. He regularly performs in New York at several prestigious venues.
Equally at home as both leader and sideman, Dan Levinson’s roster of musical associates includes Mel Tormé, Wynton Marsalis, Dick Hyman, and Leon Redbone. He has been featured on over 100 albums, producing nine of his own, and can be heard on the soundtracks to Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator and the Grammy Award-winning HBO television series Boardwalk Empire—to name only two.
Tamar Korn, Brooklyn-based singer for The Brain Cloud, plays a repertoire steeped in traditional New Orleans jazz, western swing, and American roots music. Skilled in both lyrical and “instrumental” vocals, she has toured across North America, Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Film Screening: Yours for a Song: The Women of Tin Pan Alley — 2 p.m.
In the Ross Hall
Many popular music standards of the Tin Pan Alley era (1920–49) were written by women, including Dorothy Fields, Kay Swift, Dana Suesse, and Ann Ronell, who were among the most influential songwriters of the time. This PBS documentary includes archival footage, motion picture clips, and rarely seen photographs, as well as performance clips of Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and Perry Como.
Native Plant Garden Tour — 2:30 p.m.
Meet at the Reflecting Pool at the Leon Levy Visitor Center
Join a tour guide for an insider’s view of the Native Plant Garden. Enjoy a mosaic of nearly 100,000 native trees, wildflowers, ferns and grasses designed to flourish in every season.
Ongoing Children’s Programs
Family Adventures: Focusing on Nature — 10 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.
In the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden
Children will explore the art of garden photography and will even have the opportunity to become garden photographers themselves. Through a series of stops within the Garden, they will see the world through a new lens as they learn how observations in science and nature have been recorded throughout time. They will also receive tips about perspective, scale, and framing when taking photographs.
Dig! Plant! Grow!: Salad Days — 1:30–5:30 p.m.
In the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden
The ”salad days” of the Garden year are here! The finale of spring is a bonanza of ripe roots, succulent stems, glorious greens, and a kaleidoscope of colorful—and edible—flowers. Use real plants and flowers to decorate a salad bowl collage. Learn tips on how to combine this array of plant parts into an assortment of salads and prepare a healthy dressing to take home.
Mario Batali’s Kitchen Gardens — 1:30 – 6 p.m.
In the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden
Kids can explore with Mario’s Menu Mystery game, featuring favorite vegetables and herbs from nine of his restaurants’ kitchens, including Otto and Del Posto.
