Getting People to Look at Plants

The New York Botanical Gardens has devised an ingenious way to encourage people to look at plants.  In the summer of 2011, curators paired a display garden inspired by the Alhambra with Federico Garcia Lorca’s poetry on landscapes printed on strategically placed boards throughout the gardens.  The exhibit entitled Spanish Paradise: Gardens of the Alhambra occasionally hosted flamenco music and dancers, and the cafes offered Mediterranean cuisine.  This summer, the curators brought together plants found in Monet’s gardens at Giverny and the French Symbolist poets Mallarmé and Rimbaud.  There was also an exhibit of Elizabeth Murray’s photographs of Monet’s gardens as well as Water Lily Concerts with chamber music by French composer Debussy.  Of course the cafes offered French food.  This mix of gardens with artist, poet, photographer, musician and chef unites similar sentiments expressed through different medium any one of which might be enough to spur a visit.  Once there, the experience multiplies as the initiating art form exposes you to the possible enchantment with another.  Further, associations are refreshed through the reinterpretation of a foreign land’s gardens or remembered from viewing Monet’s water lily paintings in a museum.

This exhibition is wonderful in its complete aesthetic experience.  Aesthetics is not limited by definition to visual perception alone; aesthetics is the perception of all five outer senses.  People experience the world through their perception of it and find it more meaningful when all the senses are engaged.  While designers tend to focus on appearances, and it is true that the visual sense is privileged, deeper feelings depend on the alerted perceptions of sound, taste, smell and especially touch.  Teachers of young children know that learning occurs differently for each and cultivate a variety of sensory techniques to effectively convey information.  People may develop compensating skills for difficult learning, but prefer methods that are more easily accessed.

Designers know that most projects are dominated by function with the “niceties” vulnerable to practical cost saving cuts.  People do need for things to work.  The generous budget might seem excessive with upgraded products or finishes often absorbing the so-called excess.  However, opulent gold-plated bathtubs do not enrich the experience of bathing.  One lesson from this recession – I hope – is that longer-lasting materials will be chosen making them both more sustainable and more likely to be emotionally satisfying.  The sustainable aesthetic then would be design that achieves its purpose through full aesthetic experience.

If I argue that the Monet’s Garden exhibit does this, how does that compare to the design premise of Disneyland or Las Vegas hotels?  Simulating European cities or ancient Rome can never stand for the true experience because its sanitized version is a thin visual veneer of the actual experience.  Meant to entertain, the spectator has to buy into the illusion absent the smells, sounds and feel of the actual place.  On the other hand, Monet’s Garden exhibit is meant to educate, and this makes the difference.  Each form of artistic expression offers either something familiar, or something new and challenging.  Thus the plants participate with the poetry, music, food and feelings, and have a chance to inspire the imagination.