Come celebrate the opening of Dornith Doherty’s Illuminations: Past, Present, and Future of Fern Research in the Madeline R. Samples Exhibit Hall.  This event is open to all with no registration required.

Dornith Doherty: Illuminations: Past, Present, and Future of Fern Research is a tripartite environmental art exhibition emerging from a research-based creative collaboration with Dr. Alejandra Vasco, Research Botanist, Ana Niño, Librarian, and Tiana Rehman, Herbarium Director at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT).  As an artist affiliated with BRIT since July 2021, Doherty investigated the crucial physical artifacts of botanical biodiversity research – from a collection of diaphanized plants made in the 1950s to a contemporary Andean biodiversity project focused on diverse ferns threatened by climate change and ecosystem disruption. 

With this exhibition, Dornith Doherty presents new large-scale artworks that engage with the past, chronicle the present, and project our possible ecological futures. The exhibition includes Doherty’s large-scale transparencies made from mid-20th century American plant studies, artworks made from images of ferns recently discovered in the tropics of Colombia, and a projection of animated genomic data from these plants. 

Dornith Doherty is a 2012 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and an American artist working primarily with photography, video, and scientific imaging. She received a BA from Rice University and an MFA in Photography from Yale University. Doherty lives in Dallas, and is Distinguished Research Professor at the University of North Texas, where she has been on the faculty since 1996. In addition to the Guggenheim Fellowship, she has received grants from the Fulbright Foundation, the Japan Foundation, and the United States Department of the Interior. Artist-in-residencies: Museum of Contemporary Art-Toronto, Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies, and Botanical Research Institute of Texas. Recent exhibitions: Unsettled Natures: Artists Reflect on the Age of Human, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC; Archiving Eden: Exchange, Museum of Contemporary Art-Toronto; Seedscapes: Future-Proofing Nature, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, England; Dornith Doherty: Archiving Eden, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C., and Companion Species, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR. Her work has been shown and collected extensively in the United States and abroad.

Alejandra Vasco is a Research Botanist at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas. She received her PhD in Biology from the City University of New York and The New York Botanical Garden, and a BS in Biology from the Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia. Dr. Vasco’s research focus is on the diversity and evolution of ferns.  She and colleagues were awarded a 4-year NSF grant in 2021 (DEB- 2045319) to document and explore the high diversity of ferns in Colombia.

Tiana Rehman is the Herbarium Director at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas where she has worked since 2009. She received a MS in Environmental Science from Texas Christian University, and a BS in Environmental Science and BA in Cultural Anthropology from Southern Methodist University. As Herbarium Director Tiana oversees nearly 1.5 million herbarium specimens, microscope slides, microphotographs, and liquid-preserved collections.

Ana Niño is the Librarian at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas. She received a BS from Cornell University in Science & Technology studies, and a MS in Library and Information Science from the University of North Texas. As the BRIT Librarian, she facilitates research and manages library, archival, and art acquisitions.

With support from: National Science Foundation Division of Environmental Biology Grant 2045319, and the University of North Texas College of Visual Arts and Design Scholarly and Creative Activity Award.

The Madeline R. Samples Exhibit Hall is located in the BRIT building of the Fort Worth Botanic Garden located at 1700 University Dr. Fort Worth, Texas 76107. Gallery hours are 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Monday-Friday. For more information, please call (817) 332-4441.

For more information about the exhibit: dornith.doherty@unt.edu and avasco@brit.org