Join us on September 16 for an evening with Dr. Jodi Hauptman (the Richard Roth Senior Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, The Museum of Modern Art) and Dr. Lena Struwe (Director of the Chrysler Herbarium and Professor at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, Rutgers University) as they discuss artist Hilma af Klint’s profound engagement with nature.
In the spring and summer of 1919 and 1920, Hilma af Klint ventured into the fields and forests near her home and studio on the Swedish island of Munsö outside of Stockholm and drew flowers almost every day. The result was an ambitious portfolio of drawings known as the Nature Studies — exquisitely-rendered watercolors featured in the current exhibition Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers, on view at MoMA through September 27. In these works, af Klint joins close observation and envisioning, representation and abstraction, to show, as she put it, “a connection between the plant world and the world of the soul.”
Af Klint’s Nature Studies reveal her to be a keen-eyed naturalist highly attuned to the rhythms of the blooming season with deep knowledge of Sweden’s plants — from where they grow to how they reproduce. Where did this knowledge come from? What kind of botanical education did women have access to in the 19th century? How did nature inspire af Klint? What is the character of her botanical world? Hauptman and Struwe will introduce af Klint’s luminous portfolio and discuss these and other questions, offering a new perspective on the practice of this visionary artist.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
JODI HAUPTMAN is The Richard Roth Senior Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, at The Museum of Modern Art. She organized the exhibition Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers, currently on view at MoMA. Past exhibitions include Cézanne Drawing (2021), Engineer, Agitator, Constructor: The Artist Reinvented (2020), Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty (2016), Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs (2014), and Georges Seurat: The Drawings (2007). Her publications have been recognized by the Association of American Publishers, the Dedalus Foundation, the Motuvun Group of International Publishers, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Hauptman has lectured widely on modern and contemporary art and has contributed essays to exhibition catalogues, edited volumes, and scholarly journals. An advocate for collaborations between curators and conservators, Hauptman received the College Art Association/American Institute for Conservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation (2019). She holds an AB from Princeton University and a PhD from Yale University.
LENA STRUWE is the Director of the Chrysler Herbarium and Professor at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ, USA), where she teaches botany, biodiversity, evolution, and nature journaling. She has 40 years of broad scientific research, community engagement, and teaching experience. Dr. Struwe obtained her Bachelor of Science in Biology and Earth Sciences and her PhD in Systematic Botany at Stockholm University in Sweden and previously worked at The New York Botanical Garden. Dr. Struwe has led many research projects on several continents, especially about the evolution and biodiversity of gentians and relatives, botanical accuracy in commercial products, land plant evolution, and human perceptions and historical dispersal of weedy plants. She has received six teaching awards, including three national ones: the Peter Raven Award, the Bessey Teaching Award, and the Innovation in Plant Systematics Education Prize. Her expertise includes how to use hands-on and reality-based experiences outdoors and with biodiversity museum collections to provide better understanding of science, evolution, and connections to fields like art, history, and society.
Image credits:
Title Image: Tilia × europaea (Common Linden). Sheet 22 (detail) from the portfolio Nature Studies. July 29, 1919. Watercolor, pencil, ink, and metallic paint on paper, 19 5/8 × 10 5/8 in. (49.9 × 27 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund and gift of Jack Shear, 2022
Headshots:
Dr. Jodi Hauptman: Jodi Hauptman. © 2021 The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo: Peter Ross.
Dr. Lena Struwe: Photo by and © Iryna Sosnovska