ArtPlantae Today

By Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation

As part of a multi-year photography initiative at the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, we are working to photograph our entire Art collection. These photos are primarily for in-house purposes, but we would like to add small, 100 dpi thumbnails of the artwork to our Catalogue of the Botanical Art Collection at the Hunt Institute database, which is accessible on our Web site. These thumbnails will be of low-resolution, unable to be reproduced and still protected by copyright where applicable. Adding thumbnails of the 29,470 works in our Art collection to our online database not only will provide helpful information for researchers but also will give potential visitors and scholars the opportunity to see amazing examples of botanical art by historical masters and leading contemporary artists. To date we have photographed and added thumbnails for several collections that are out of copyright or are otherwise in the public domain.

Because this is a use not covered in the original donation or purchase agreement prior to 2010, we would like to contact all living artists (or their heirs) who have work in our collection to request permission to include thumbnail images in our database. We ask that any artist who has participated in our International Exhibition of Botanical Art & Illustration series prior to the 13th International in 2010 and whose work is in our collection please contact:

Carrie Roy
Assistant Curator of Art
Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation
5th Floor, Hunt Library
4909 Frew Street
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Telephone: 412-268-3035
Fax: 412-268-5677
Contact Carrie Roy

State either “Yes, I grant permission for a thumbnail of my artwork to be included on the Web site” or “No, I do not wish for my artwork to have a thumbnail on the Web site.” Be sure to include updated contact information so that we can include it in our private records and contact you should there be any request involving your work.

Feel free to contact us with any questions you have about this issue, and please note that this is a multi-year project involving both a Web site re-design and extensive photography. Photos will be uploaded to the Web site in stages, and we cannot give an exact date for when any single artwork will appear.

About the Institute
The Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, a research division of Carnegie Mellon University, specializes in the history of botany and all aspects of plant science and serves the international scientific community through research and documentation. To this end, the Institute acquires and maintains authoritative collections of books, plant images, manuscripts, portraits and data files, and provides publications and other modes of information service. The Institute meets the reference needs of botanists, biologists, historians, conservationists, librarians, bibliographers and the public at large, especially those concerned with any aspect of the North American flora.

Hunt Institute was dedicated in 1961 as the Rachel McMasters Miller Hunt Botanical Library, an international center for bibliographical research and service in the interests of botany and horticulture, as well as a center for the study of all aspects of the history of the plant sciences. By 1971 the Library’s activities had so diversified that the name was changed to Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. Growth in collections and research projects led to the establishment of four programmatic departments: Archives, Art, Bibliography and the Library. The current collections include approximately 30,150 book and serial titles; 29,000+ portraits; 29,470 watercolors, drawings and prints; 243,000+ data files; and 2,000 autograph letters and manuscripts. The Archives specializes in biographical information about, portraits of and handwriting samples from scientists, illustrators and all others in the plant sciences. The Archives is a repository of alternate resort and as such has collected over 300 institutional and individual archival collections that may not have otherwise found an easy fit at another institution. Including artworks dating from the Renaissance, the Art Department’s collection now focuses on contemporary botanical art and illustration, where the coverage is unmatched. The Art Department organizes and stages exhibitions, including the triennial International Exhibition of Botanical Art & Illustration. The Bibliography Department maintains comprehensive data files on the history and bibliography of botanical literature. Known for its collection of historical works on botany dating from the late 1400s to the present, the Library’s collection focuses on the development of botany as a science and also includes herbals (eight are incunabula), gardening manuals and florilegia, many of them pre-Linnaean. Modern taxonomic monographs, floristic works and serials as well as selected works in medical botany, economic botany, landscape architecture and a number of other plant-related topics are also represented.