This page provide links to where you can find an archive in the USA of botanical art and illustrations
in the permanent collections of:
  • Museums, 
  • Libraries, 
  • Botanical gardens in the USA 
  • Private collections of botanical art collectors.
Many museums have no botanical art collection as such.

However what they do have is artwork by specific artists who painted plants and flowers - such as this painting by Redoute in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

It's always worth checking out any favourite artists to see if you can find a listing.
Heliocereus Speciosus by Pierre-Joseph Redouté
A Flowering Cactus: Heliocereus Speciosus by Pierre-Joseph Redouté. Watercolor on vellum (1831) Location: Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

Libraries in the USA

PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA

Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University

The Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation opened in 1961. It promotes the history of botany through its collections, research, exhibitions, publications, and services.

The Hunt Institute was founded as a library focused around the collection created by Rachel Hunt. Between 1730 to 1840 she collected over 1,300 botanical watercolors, drawings and prints. The Art Collection has since grown to include 29,504 items.

Exhibitions are open to the public free of charge and are held in the 5th floor Gallery of the Hunt Library building at Carnegie Mellon University.

MAILING ADDRESS: Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, 
Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890
STREET ADDRESS: 4909 Frew Street, 5th Floor, Hunt Library
REFERENCES:

Botanical Gardens in the USA
​

ILLINOIS
NEW YORK

The Morton Arboretum

Art Collection 
more than 12,000 works of art, including original paintings, pen and ink, colored pencil, scratchboard drawings, nearly 1,000 nature prints, as well as a variety of lithographs, etchings, engravings, aquatints, and commercial reproductions of plants and the insects/animals related to them.
MISSOURI

Missouri Botanical Garden Library

  • Botanicus Digital Library - Botanicus is a freely accessible, Web-based encyclopedia of historic botanical literature from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library. Botanicus is made possible through support from the W.M. Keck Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

New York Botanical Garden

Museums in the USA

CALIFORNIA

Getty Research Institute

Tania Norris Collection of Rare Botanical Books and Woodblocks - the the collection consists of 41 rare books that provide unparalleled insight into the contributions of natural science to visual culture in Europe from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. ​
The illustration
The illustration "Spring" from Crispijn van de Passe's book "Hortus Floridus", 1614
​Highlights of the collection include 
  • ​Crispin Van de Passe’s Hortus Floridus (1614), apparently the first illustrated book to apply the microscopy of magnifying lenses to botanical illustration;
  • Johann Christoph Volkamer’s Nürnbergische Hesperides (1708), documenting both the introduction of Italian citrus culture to Germany, and the revolution in urban planning which ensued from the parks designed for their cultivation and irrigation. 
  • a copy of Maria Sibylla Merian’s Derde en laatste deel der Rupsen Begin (1717), the first book to depict insect metamorphosis, reputedly hand-colored by her daughter.
Picture
Hand coloured image of Bergamotto della grand Sorte in "Nürnbergische Hesperides" (1708) by Johann Christoph Volkamer
MASSACHUSETTS

Harvard Museum of Natural History

Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants, the “Glass Flowers." 
  • Over 4,000 glass models of 830 species created over five decades. They provided life-like representatives of the plant kingdom for teaching botany.
  • Created by 19th century Bohemian glass artists Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka 
  • Reopened to the public in May 2016 following a major restoration (see video below).
DRAWING UPON NATURE: 
Studies for the Blaschkas' Glass Models
2007, hardcover, 
166 pages, 60 color plates
BUY THIS BOOK
DRAWING UPON NATURE: Studies for the Blaschkas' Glass Models - Amazon.com
WISCONSIN

University of Wisconsin-Madison
WASHINGTON D.C.

Smithsonian Museum of Natural History

  • The Department of Botany of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History has created a database of the more than 3000 botanical illustrations curated by the department's scientific illustrator, Alice Tangerini.

Private Collectors
​

The Alisa and Isaac M. Sutton Collection

This is the largest collection of botanical art in the USA and continues to grow. It's been exhibited at the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation in Pittsburgh, The New York Botanical Garden and the Shirley Sherwood Gallery at Kew Gardens. 

I've had the pleasure of meeting Isaac M Sutton at Kew and wrote about his collection, how it came about and how he plans to develop it in Botanicals - Environmental Expressions in Art - a review.

You can view another interview with Mr Sutton in a Kew blog post Inspired to collect: The Alisa and Isaac M. Sutton Collection. 

​You can also see his collection on Facebook.
Picture
Isaac M Sutton with his favourite painting in his collection The Sutton Dogwood, Gouache on paper (2001) by Katie Lee. He commissioned this painting of the dogwood which flowers at his home in Brooklyn. He also plans to commission a series of paintings by different artists to paint the tree at different times of the year.
Botanicals: Environmental Expression in Art - The Alisa and Isaac M. Sutton Collection
by James J White

This is a book celebrating key paintings in the collection and is available to buy when the collection is exhibited. I recommended people buy it at the time as the price would only go up over time - and I was right!
  • Paperback: 133 pages
  • Publisher: Hunt Inst for Botanical (June 30, 2009)

    • BUY THIS BOOK