Trees & Other Ramifications: Branches in Nature & Culture
Exhibition
Exhibition Overview
Trees & Other Ramifications: Branches in Nature & Culture
Stephen Goddard, curator
Central Court, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas
Trees and other Ramifications offers an open-ended look at some of the many ways that trees are meaningful to humanity and important in the natural world.
Exhibition images
Works of art
circa 1926–1928
1987
1980
1974, Showa period (1926–1989)
circa 1905
circa 1890
circa 1997
2001–2005
1979
1979
Cretaceous period, collected mid to late 1800s
![Isidore of Seville, Hec est arbor Consanguineitatis (Here is the Tree of Blood Relationships) from Etymologiae. Liber Ethymologiarum Isidori Hyspalensis Ep[iscop]i.](https://sma-search-api.ku.edu/ea4208842c08996bda056e641cd793b4b74066379b42086fda0a837d677233f8/EL2009.015.jpg)
2006
date unknown
2008
2004
date unknown
Resources
Audio
Didactic – Art Minute
Didactic – Art Minute
Episode 184, Episode 185
Apr-2009
I’m David Cateforis with another Art Minute from the Spencer Museum of Art. The early 20th-century German photographer Karl Blossfeldt is famous for his starkly elegant black-and-white photographs of plant forms. An impressive example of such work is a photograph Blossfeldt made in the 1920s of a single leaf of a thistle-like plant known as an eryngo or sea holly; its scientific name is Eryngium Bourgatii. This close-up view of the dark symmetrical leaf set against a white background emphasizes its strong vertical stem and diagonally branching spines. Simultaneously beautiful and menacing, the isolated leaf calls to mind a spiky architectural ornament and it is easy to imagine it translated into metal or stone. An influential art teacher in Berlin, Blossfeldt believed that nature’s forms provided aesthetic models for artistic and architectural design -- an idea that he demonstrated powerfully in his 1928 book Artforms in Nature, in which this image of the eyrngo was originally published. You can see Blossfeldt’s photograph in the current Spencer exhibition, Trees and Other Ramifications, on view through May 24th. From the Spencer Museum of Art, I’m David Cateforis.
Didactic – Art Minute
Didactic – Art Minute
Episode 179
Feb-2009, Jayme Johnson
I’m David Cateforis with another Art Minute from the Spencer Museum of Art. Visiting KU art professor Stacy Fox has designed the new Spencer Museum of Art Island in Second Life® which explores the world of art by going virtual. Second Life® is an Internet-based virtual realm allowing players to create their own virtual characters or avatars and explore the world that has been created by other users just like themselves. The Spencer Island presently relates to the exhibitions Climate Change at the Poles and Trees & Other Ramifications. Currently home to a large flooded area covered in icebergs, glacial information, enormous trees and a floating globe, the world will continue to evolve to incorporate future exhibitions and works from the permanent collection. In addition to the virtual world, this spring the museum’s Process Space will host a computer which visitors can use to explore the Second Life® Island. For more information about Second Life® or to download instructions on how to create your own avatar and begin your virtual adventure, please visit www.spencerart.ku.edu. With thanks to Jayme Johnson for her text, from the Spencer Museum of Art, I’m David Cateforis.