Paper Gardens: Art, Botany and Empire

Join us for a guided walk of the exhibition Paper Gardens: Art, Botany, and Empire by Breanne Coelho from the MAP Team.

Between the 17th and 20th centuries, the Indian subcontinent was the site of extensive botanical surveys under colonial rule. Plant collection and classification were closely tied to imperial economic, medical, and political interests, and botanical illustration played a central role in this project.

Bringing together a new and historically significant collection of botanical art from this period, the exhibition draws on recent scholarship to recover the often uncredited identities and histories of the Indian artists who made them.