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Linnaean online exhibit 

Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Contact: Scarlett T. Townsend
Day Phone: 412-268-7304
Email: st19@andrew.cmu.edu

20 September 2002						For Immediate Release

Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation 
offers online Linnaean exhibition to inspire 
future students of Linnaeus

Pittsburgh, PA-Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist Carolus Linnaeus
(also Carl von Linné, 1707-1778) was famous for sending his students around
the world to explore and collect specimens. The Hunt Institute for
Botanical Documentation is pleased to enable new generations of Linnaeus'
students to explore, collect and learn by making our spring 2002
exhibition, Order from Chaos: Linnaeus Disposes, available online at our
Web site (huntbot.andrew.cmu.edu). Linnaeus devised comprehensive,
consistent schemes for classifying and describing plants and animals and
for assigning two-word scientific names to all species, thus laying the
foundations of modern biological systematics and nomenclature. Pages of
manuscripts, plant portraits, portraits of botanists and rare books from
the Institute's Archives, Art Department, and Library, including the
Strandell Collection of Linnaeana, highlight Linnaeus' achievements in the
broader context of botany over two millennia. We invite everyone to become
one of Linnaeus' students as he brings order from the chaos of early
scientific thought and practice while inspiring future generations of
botanists.

The first section of the exhibition covers pre-Linnaean botany. Long before
Linnaeus, classical science was important in the shaping of subsequent
science in the West. Transmitted through the cultures of the Mediterranean
area, classical science was recovered during the Renaissance and ensuing
Scientific Revolution, and undergirded the search for a new botanical
system. Highlights from this portion include four pages of a 13th-century
Arabic manuscript, several leaves from a 15th-century incunabulum herbal,
Gart der Gesundheit, and a number of books from the 15th and 16th centuries.

The second section shows how Linnaeus drew on the work of his predecessors
and contemporaries and developed a coherent system for describing and
naming organisms that has continued into the present. Key works by Linnaeus
including his Species Plantarum (1753) and Genera Plantarum (1754), which
are the starting points for botanical binomial nomenclature, are featured
as well as books, portraits and biographical information of his
predecessors and contemporaries.

The third section explores the Linnaean inheritance. It shows how Linnaeus'
students travelled the globe to explore and collect information and
specimens, and how aspects of the Linnaean system have enabled amateurs and
professionals worldwide to identify, name and describe plants for more than
two centuries. Included are books by Linnaeus' students, along with
portraits and biographical information, and selected examples of
post-Linnaean works showing how aspects of his system have been used from
the 18th century into the present day.

The exhibition was a collaborative effort by Institute staff that used
resources from all of our departments. The exhibition was organized by
Charlotte Tancin, Librarian; Angela Todd, Archivist, Gavin D. R. Bridson,
Bibliographer; Lugene Bruno, Assistant Curator of Art; James J. White,
Curator of Art; and Alain Touwaide, Visiting Scholar, History of Medicine
Division of the National Library of Medicine, Scientific Collaborator,
Section of Botany, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian
Institution, and Adjunct Research Scholar, Hunt Institute, with assistance
by Scarlett Townsend, Editor; Frank Reynolds, Graphics Manager; and Lisa
Ferrugia, Archival Assistant. Kristina Lamothe, Research Assistant,
designed the online exhibition. The exhibition hung in the Hunt Institute
gallery from 28 April to 31 July 2002.

Even while planning the exhibition for the gallery, we knew that our
ultimate goal was to place it on the Web. It was still challenging to
organize the artwork, portraits and books, which either hung on the wall or
were displayed in cases, into a Web-format while retaining the look and
feel of a hanging exhibition. The online version enabled us to add text and
images. We included passages from the books that Linnaeus cited in Species
Plantarum as well as a bibliography and a list of Web links. We plan to add
a bibliography for the pre-Linnaean section and enlarged images for each
artwork and book. We are pleased with the way the online version has
evolved and even more so with the opportunity to make this information
available not only to the botanical community but also to the public. 

The Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, a research division of
Carnegie Mellon University, specializes in the history of botany and all
aspects of plant science and serves the international scientific community
through research and documentation. To this end, the Institute acquires and
maintains authoritative collections of books, plant images, manuscripts,
portraits and data files, and provides publications and other modes of
information service. The Institute meets the reference needs of botanists,
biologists, historians, conservationists, librarians, bibliographers and
the public at large, especially those concerned with any aspect of the
North American flora.

Hunt Institute was founded in 1961 as the Rachel McMasters Miller Hunt
Botanical Library, an international center for bibliographical research and
service in the interests of botany and horticulture, as well as a center
for the study of all aspects of the history of the plant sciences. By 1971,
the Library's activities had so diversified that the name was changed to
Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. Growth in collections and
research projects led to the establishment of four programmatic
departments: Archives, Art, Bibliography, and the Library. The current
collections include approximately 28,000 books; 24,000 portraits; 30,000
watercolors, drawings and prints; and 2,000 autograph letters and
manuscripts.


********************
Angela Todd
Archivist & Research Scholar
Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA  15213-3890
FAX: 412-268-5677
Website: http://huntbot.andrew.cmu.edu
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