Plant Talk

Inside The New York Botanical Garden

Moore Exhibition Extended!

Posted in Exhibitions, Exhibitions, Moore in America, NYBG in the News, Video on October 30 2008, by Plant Talk

Nick Leshi is Associate Director of Public Relations and Electronic Media.

Art fans, rejoice! Moore in America: Monumental Sculpture at The New York Botanical Garden , the largest outdoor exhibition of Henry Moore’s artwork ever presented in a single venue in the United States, is being extended through January 11, 2009.

The show, a collection of 20 major pieces, opened at the Botanical Garden on May 24, during the height of the spring flowering season. It garnered critical acclaim from the media and the public alike during the summer months. Now nearly all of these magnificent works by one of modern art’s greatest icons can be seen during fall and early winter, providing audiences with the chance to experience the sculpture for the first time or return again to witness them in contrasting seasons. The monumental pieces are positioned throughout the Garden’s 250 acres and among its 50 gardens and plant collections, complementing the historic landscape during nature’s changing cycles.

The extension of Moore in America through the holiday season guarantees that visitors to The New York Botanical Garden will be able to enjoy the outdoor sculpture while simultaneously experiencing the Garden’s other major exhibitions—Kiku: The Art of the Japanese Chrysanthemum through November 16, the Library gallery art exhibition The Chrysanthemum in Japanese Art through January 11, and the Holiday Train Show from November 23 through January 11. The Henry Moore Foundation, which is dedicated to furthering the understanding, appreciation, and enjoyment of Moore’s work, is co-curating Moore in America with the  Garden.

If you still haven’t had the chance to see Moore in America, now is the perfect time. And if you’ve seen it already, now you have even more time to see it again with friends and loved ones, discovering anew the combination of Henry Moore’s fine sculpture and the spectacular Garden settings in changing seasons.

Here’s a video in which Educator Anabel Holland tells us a little more about a few of the sculpture.

NYBG Henry Moore 2008 from The New York Botanical Garden on Vimeo.

In the News: PBS and The New York Botanical Garden

Posted in Exhibitions, Exhibitions, Moore in America, NYBG in the News, Video on September 16 2008, by Plant Talk

Nick Leshi is Associate Director of Public Relations and Electronic Media.

NYBG on SundayArtsIn the few months since its opening, Moore in America, the exhibition of monumental sculpture on display at The New York Botanical Garden, has generated quite a bit of positive media reaction. One of the highlights was Channel Thirteen’s SundayArts feature, which included the Moore exhibition as the lead story in its news segment.

Host Christina Ha visited the Botanical Garden and shared with viewers some of the 20 artworks by Henry Moore that are placed throughout the Garden’s 250 acres, including Reclining Mother and Child in the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden. The SundayArts program airs weekly on Thirteen/WNET-TV, the flagship public broadcaster in the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut metro area. The program showcases local arts news about gallery and museum exhibits and world-class performances. Its Web site is rich with artist profiles, blogs, calendar listings, multi-media content, and more.

In addition to covering Moore in America, PBS has featured other stories about the Botanical Garden as well.

New York Voices, the weekly half-hour newsmagazine program and Emmy-winning series that presents in-depth stories unique to the lives of New Yorkers, documented the Garden’s Plant Research Laboratory and last spring’s popular exhibition Darwin’s Garden: An Evolutionary Adventure, hosted by Rafael Pi Roman.

One of my favorite PBS programs in recent memory was “A Walk Through the Bronx,” in which award-winning documentary-maker David Hartman and historian Barry Lewis explored the history of our fine borough, including a fascinating look at the early history of The New York Botanical Garden.

David Hartman later returned to the Garden for a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into making NYBG’s crowd-favorite Holiday Train Show, filming a documentary about Paul Busse and his team at Applied Imagination.

As the Botanical Garden continues to attract the attention of an ever-growing landscape of traditional and new media, public television continues to be a source of thought-provoking and engaging content not easily found elsewhere, sharing with its millions of viewers topics about education, science, culture and the arts, and much, much more.

All-Stars at the Garden

Posted in NYBG in the News on July 15 2008, by Plant Talk

Nick Leshi is Associate Director of Public Relations and Electronic Media and a die-hard Yankees fan.

Legions of baseball fans and sports journalists are flocking to the Bronx today for the 2008 All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium. Our borough has lots to offer, and the home of the Bronx Bombers is just one of many great attractions for people to see.

Bernie Williams

Over the years, The New York Botanical Garden has been visited by a few of the “boys of summer” who have worn those classic pinstripes and played in baseball’s historic cathedral. Former Yankees center fielder and All-Star Bernie Williams dropped by during the winter of 2004 (seen at right with Bob Heinisch, our VP for Site Operations). Joe Torre, who guided the Yankees through four World Series Championships and was an All-Star player himself during his career, toured the Holiday Train Show with his family a few years ago as well. Other Yankee heroes and All-Stars who have enjoyed a visit to the Botanical Garden included Joe Pepitone and Willie Randolph (seen below, again with VP Bob). Yankee broadcaster Michael Kay even served as Master of Ceremonies for the Garden’s Holiday Tree Lighting ceremony in 2007.
Willie Randolph
This is the last year people will be able to step foot inside the “House That Ruth Built”—the new stadium opens next year. But you can wax nostalgic and still see a replica of the original Yankee Stadium—made of plant parts—at the Garden’s Holiday Train Show, which opens November 23.