At the Singapore Botanic Gardens, the first artist was hired in 1890 by Henry Nicholas Ridley, the Gardens’ first director. Numerous artists followed, engaged to illustrate rare native species, edible and useful plants, and ornamental garden hybrids, each reflecting the changing priorities over the Gardens’ history. The collections today include more than 2,000 botanical paintings and hundreds of sketches, line drawings and photographs. A selection of these artworks is displayed for the first time at the Botanical Art Gallery, a refurbished conservation building within a recently launched extension of the Singapore Botanic Gardens. The gallery highlights the vital role that art plays in the scientific documentation of plant diversity in Singapore and the region, as well as how art can inspire the public to appreciate the natural world. The curation of the Gardens’ botanical art collections prior to the gallery opening offered the opportunity to uncover the history of the collections by studying the primary sources. This talk will offer insights on this process and subsequent publication of Tropical Plants in Focus: Botanical Illustration at the Singapore Botanic Gardens.  

About the Speaker

Michele Rodda is a taxonomist at the Singapore Botanic Gardens, who specialises in the Apocynaceae (the frangipani family) of Southeast Asia and neighbouring regions. He has also been studying the historic collections of botanical art in the Garden’s archives. Since 2014 he has closely worked with the botanical artists at the Singapore Botanic Gardens who have been engaged to make pen and ink illustrations for the Flora of Singaporebook series as well as to illustrate new species. He is the curator of exhibitions at the Garden’s Botanical Art Gallery and he has written the book Tropical Plants in Focus: Botanical Illustration at the Singapore Botanic Gardens (2021).