The Fitzwilliam Museum invites applications from early- to mid-career curators of botanical works of art on paper to participate in a series of workshops and collections visits in Cambridge, London and Edinburgh.
The workshops will center on the Fitzwilliam Museum’s outstanding collection of around 2,000 botanical drawings, watercolors and prints, dating from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century. These include superb examples by the most renowned and influential practitioners of the genre, mainly European, as well as artists of the Chinese, Japanese and Indian schools.
The Growing Networks project, led by Jane Munro, Keeper and Henrietta Ward, Assistant Keeper in the Paintings, Drawings and Prints department, sets out to establish and nurture a network that will bring together curators with responsibility for important collections of botanical works of art on paper throughout the UK, working in art museums, libraries, archives, botanic gardens and herbaria. It presents a valuable forum for discussion for curators with diverse subject specialisms, linking botanists and plant scientists with art curators and paper conservators who have expertise in technical analysis and collections care, enabling us to share knowledge, resources and ideas.
The project will take the form of a series of workshops and collection visits from 7 – 15 June 2020; based mainly in Cambridge at the Fitzwilliam Museum, but also include sessions in the Cambridge University Herbarium and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Significant time will also be spent at the Natural History Museum, Royal Horticultural Society Lindley Library and Kew Gardens in London and the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh.
A small number of specialists in botanical art, conservation and curation will form part of the group to ensure participating curators benefit from their expertise, and extend networking opportunities. The Fitzwilliam, therefore, welcomes applications from curators working not only in art museums, but in libraries, archives, history museums and herbaria.
For more information and to apply, see here. Applications due Oct. 13th.