Check It Out: Botanical Collage Exhibit

This fall, the Yale Center for British Art will be the only North American venue for the ambitious exhibition, Mrs. Delany and her Circle. Opening September 24, it will explore the remarkable life and art of Mary Delany (1700-1788), a botanical artist, garden designer, woman of fashion, and commentator on life and society in eighteenth-century England and Ireland. (She may be a possible candidate for your “Groundbreaker” profile?)

At the age of seventy-two, Mary Delany embarked on a series of one thousand botanical collages, or “paper mosaics," which were the crowning achievement of a life defined by creative accomplishment. She also created bold new garden designs and was an accomplished embroiderer who produced elaborate designs for dresses and furnishings. (Among her most extraordinary designs was a court dress embroidered with a cascade of naturalistic flowers on black satin, ca. 1739–40.)