Greetings and a Happy International Botanical Art Day!
The American Society of Botanical Artists has announced their intention to hold a second collaborative exhibition in May 2025. May 18th was declared International Botanical Art Day at the time of the first Worldwide exhibition in 2018 when 26 countries across the world held simultaneous art exhibitions - and many countries have continued to celebrate this day each year.
South Africa again plans to be part of this exciting initiative in 2025 and we have attached below preliminary details regarding the theme so that BAASA members can start planning their art works. We have no further details at this stage, but members will be kept advised as further information becomes available.
We will
start looking for a suitable venue for the exhibition, an organizing committee
and a dramatic logo. You have two horticultural years to do research and select
stunning subjects to illustrate. Be aware of the exciting stories that go with
the crop plants you select.
Artworks
will need to go through a selection process, to ensure a high standard.
~~~
Theme
for 2025: Crop Diversity/Crop Heritage: heritage varieties of useful cultivated crop plants,
focusing on edibles, but also including those used for textiles, building,
energy, and medicine. The theme would draw attention to the vast variety of
food and useful plants in the world compared to the few varieties in mass
cultivation.
Our heritage of useful plants has been passed to us for
safekeeping, and it is up to us to pass them on to future generations:
- Useful crops: but not those used in modern, large scale
monocultural agriculture.
- Crop wild relatives: wild species that can be hybridized with cultivated
crops to impart a new characteristic to the cultivated crop, or that are
foraged wild plants.
- Ancient crops: those that have been cultivated for hundreds or
thousands of years in the same form.
Hybrids are eligible – many food crops
are hybridized, and many are species but cultivars of those species.
BAASA
Gauteng
18 May 2022
