In Search of Thoreau's Flowers: An Exploration of Change and Loss

This interdisciplinary exhibition features an immersive and interactive installation using pressed plants that were collected by writer, philosopher, and naturalist Henry David Thoreau in the mid-nineteenth century. Thoreau lived in a cabin adjacent to Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, where he collected and preserved hundreds of botanical specimens that are now housed at Harvard University Herbaria. The exhibition creates an awe-inspiring experience that brings these specimens back to life, while also encouraging reflection about human impacts on the environment. Originally mounted at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, this exhibition includes newly made artworks centering on biodiversity in North Carolina, connecting Thoreau's legacy of environmental observation to the plants and insects that North Carolinians encounter in their daily lives.