Left to right: Jensen Wheeler Wolfe, Bob Grese, Carey Lundin, and Darrel Morrison shared their insights on the legacy of Jens Jensen and his revolutionary urban landscape designs.
“We all need the living green or we’ll shrivel up inside. To make the modern city livable is the task of our times.”
– Jens Jensen
On Earth Day, Wednesday, April 22, The Humanities Institute hosted New York City’s only screening of the award-winning documentary, Jens Jensen The Living Green. Followed by a panel featuring the film’s director and scholars in ecological landscape design, the event attracted more than 200 people in an exploration of the work of Jens Jensen (1860–1951) and its relevance to today’s urban environmental issues. Jensen was a passionate environmental activist and now, 50 years after his death, he is hailed as a pioneer of sustainable design, an early champion of native species, and a visionary landscape designer.
Speakers and hosts: Susan Fraser (Director Mertz Library), Arlene Shaner, Lisa O’Sullivan, Lucy Barnhouse, Ina Vandebroek, Jodi Moise, and Vanessa Sellers (Coordinator, Humanities Institute)
The Humanities Institute’s Winter Colloquium, The Healing Properties of Plants: Art, Culture, Science, was held at the Mertz Library on Friday, February 20, 2015. The colloquium was organized in conjunction with the NYBG exhibit on the curative properties of exotic plants, Wild Medicine in the Tropics, at the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.
On November 7, 2014, the Symposium The Changing Nature of Nature in Cities was held to a sold-out crowd in Ross Hall. It was the 2nd Symposium hosted by The New York Botanical Garden’s new Humanities Institute. Organized in collaboration with Todd Forrest, Arthur Ross Vice President for Horticulture and Living Collections, and Jessica Arcate Schuler, Director of the Thain Family Forest, it brought together a diverse group of scientists, botanists, landscape and garden design professionals, urban planners, architects, and general public to discuss the development of novel ecosystems in our rapidly growing metropolitan areas—a timely and often contentious subject in current conversations on the topic.
By exploring innovative approaches to studies in the environmental humanities, the Humanities Institute aims to bridge the gap between the arts and sciences. To further the connection between the disciplines, the Institute offers short- and long-term fellowship programs for students and scholars from a wide range of backgrounds and holds a number of events, including symposia, seminars, and colloquia.
Various seminars and colloquia, or dynamic “round table brainstorming sessions,” were held in July and September in which graduate students from New York universities and institutes of art and science—including the Bard Graduate Center, the Cooper Hewitt-Smithsonian Design Museum, and Fordham University—participated. The events featured a historic book and manuscript viewing in the Mertz Library’s Rare Book Room, followed by lively debate. During the discussions, students tried to define what form a humanities research center should take on to be most relevant in today’s rapidly changing world.
The audience asked insightful questions relating to the topic of women as architects and photographers—a topic linked to the Garden-wide exhibitionGroundbreakers. “Cities are the grand challenge of the 21st century, and for over one hundred years women have played a crucial, if under-celebrated, role in shaping and adapting our urban spaces,” explained Thaisa Way (University of Washington, Seattle). This award-winning landscape historian moderated the fascinating morning session that featured four experts in landscape scholarship and practice, including Susannah Drake (Founding Principal, dlandstudio, Brooklyn), Sonja Dümpelmann (Harvard Graduate School of Design), Linda Jewell (University of California Berkeley), and Mary Woods (Cornell University).
