WINSTON-SALEM, NC.- Reynolda House Museum of American Art will host a new exhibition titled "Heroes of Horticulture" July 31 through September 27, 2009 in the museum's Babcock Wing gallery. The exhibition, organized by George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in collaboration with The Cultural Landscape Foundation of Washington, D.C., includes photographs of magnificent trees and plantings, some of which are more than 100 years old.
In the summer of 2007, a curatorial team from George Eastman House invited 12 photographers to photograph the sites designated by the Cultural Landscape Foundation as their 2007 Landslide landscapes. Landslide landscapes are horticultural sites that have stood steadfast in the face of development. The photographs made for this project record and illustrate the astonishing specimen trees, groves, allées, and plant collections throughout the United States that the Cultural Landscape Foundation deems unique and character-defining to a region. They also represent collaborations with artists that have yielded compelling interpretations of extraordinary places.
Hosting "Heroes of Horticulture" presents a unique opportunity for Reynolda House to exhibit archival photographs and landscape architectural plans of the early Reynolda landscape in concert with these national living landmarks. The archival images are the work of prominent Philadelphia landscape architect and photographer Thomas Sears, who was engaged by both Katharine Reynolds and her daughter Mary Reynolds Babcock to design the plans for the grounds of the Reynolda estate. This will be the first time that these archival images of the Reynolda estate have been on view to the public.