Beginning in 2020, the Arboretum partnered with the Harvard Art Museums to explore the interactions of art and the natural world alongside the Museums’ special exhibition Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg Collection. A series of offerings planned for this spring encourage you to learn more about art from the Edo period (1615-1868) while exploring the Arboretum, which remains free and open every day.
Planting Edo: A Field Guide
In this guide, you will find key plants from the Painting Edo exhibition paired with their counterparts from the living collections at the Arboretum. You can use this guide at the Arboretum or while virtually exploring the Painting Edo exhibition to learn more about the botanical and poetic qualities of various plants.
Share your explorations with us on social media using #PlantingEdo. We’d love to see where the field guide takes you!
Haiku and You: Painting Edo and the Arnold Arboretum
Haiku and You offers the opportunity to find community through haiku and connect with art and nature. This spring, we invite you to be part of a community of writers, sharing the spirit of haiku and experiencing the restorative power of art and nature. Visit our online gallery to read haiku and be inspired by writing prompts and images.
In the months ahead, we will host virtual workshops and share prompts, plants, poetry, and paintings on social media, inviting you to find inspiration for your own haiku practice in the landscape of the Arboretum and the Painting Edo exhibition.
Then, we invite you to become a published poet by submitting your haiku to our online gallery or tagging us on social media using #HaikuAndYou.
Painting Edo at the Arnold Arboretum
This video series brought Arboretum and Harvard Art Museums staff into conversation, discussing plants grown at the Arboretum that are also featured in the Painting Edo exhibition.
Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg Collection is also accompanied by two publications, Painting Edo: Selections from the Feinberg Collection of Japanese Art, a sweeping and lavishly illustrated overview of a transformative era in Japanese art-making, and the new Catalogue of the Feinberg Collection of Japanese Art, the finest private collection of Edo period painting in the United States.
