ICOMOS Livecast Zoom: Botanical Gardens and Collections, woensdag 12 mei 19.30h.

Veel botanische tuinen in Europa zijn vorm gegeven in de koloniale tijd en dragen daar nog de kenmerken van. Hoe een proces van ‘dekolonisering’ in te zetten? Sharon Willoughby van Kew Gardens ontwerpt nieuwe wijzen van inclusieve storytelling. Antonio Carmo Gouvela belicht de Afrikaanse koloniale erfenis in Portugese botanische tuinen en Evie Evans vergelijkt botanische tuinen met musea.

Greenhouse of a tropical garden in Belem, photo S. Lovegrove 2018

Dear colleagues and friends,  We kindly invite you to the upcoming lecture evening on Wednesday 12 May centred around botanical gardens and collections and their links to colonial histories. In former European colonial powers and elsewhere, discussions about how countries remember their colonial pasts, and calls to change dominant narratives about these histories, have become widespread. This shift has involved critical reflections and engagements with these pasts and their contemporary representations and continuities, based on a realisation of the unequal power structures in which knowledge is produced, and of the impact of these pasts on the present. These discussions have often focused on museums, historical sites and public monuments. Botanical gardens and natural history collections have somewhat lagged behind as sites of contention and debate within this context. In recent years, however, this has been changing, and these spaces and objects are increasingly being examined and dealt with from the perspective of their implication in histories of colonial violence.  In this event, Sharon Willoughby, António Carmo Gouveia and Evie Evans will look at different botanical gardens and collections and their connections with colonialism, while exploring different approaches to dealing with these histories and their afterlives today.   Kind regards,  The ICOMOS Netherlands Lecture Committee: Ardjuna Candotti, Daan Lavies, Jean-Paul Corten, Job Pardoel, Maurits van Putten, Remco Vermeulen, Sofia Lovegrove & Thijs van Roon

Date: Wednesday, 12 May 2021 Time: 19:30 – 21:00 (CET) Livecast (via Zoom): RSVP for attendance via button below or by emailing lezingen@icomos.nl Language: English *Please note that the event will be recorded.

Register: write an email to lezingen@icomos.nl

PROGRAMME 19:30   Welcome and introduction: Sofia Lovegrove   19:35    Sharon Willoughby: Inclusive Storytelling in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew   19:55    António Carmo Gouveia: Botanic gardens, 19th century plant collections and collectors, in former portuguese colonies in Africa 20:15    Evie Evans: On the Nature of Botanical Gardens and Museums   20:35   Panel discussion and Q&A    21:00   End

ABOUT THE LECTURES Inclusive Storytelling in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew has published a new and ambitious Manifesto for Change 2021 – 2030, declaring a mission ’to understand and protect plants and fungi for the well-being of people and the future of all life on Earth’. One of the goals underpinning this mission is the determination to ensure that ’the diverse countries and cultures that partner with RBG Kew and contribute to our collections are accurately and equitably represented. We will move quickly to ‘de-colonise’ our collections, re-examining them to acknowledge and address any exploitative or racist legacies, and develop new narratives around them’. We will be asking what this means for storytelling within the gardens themselves and how we can develop inclusive storytelling that embraces the full richness of history and our tangled relationships with the natural world and each other. Botanic gardens, 19th century plant collections and collectors, in former portuguese colonies in Africa António Carmo Gouveia will take us on a quick (de)tour through Portuguese botanical gardens involved in the study of plants in the country’s former African colonies, their activities in acclimating crops or medicinal species, and in amassing collections of natural products. António will also shed light on indigenous actors’ knowledge and participation in these complex interactions with tropical nature, real and imagined, an important part of these histories of botanical studies that is often left silent. On the Nature of Botanical Gardens and Museums Evie Evans will introduce how Framer Framed’s exhibition On the Nature of Botanical Gardens, curated by Sadiah Boonstra, connected a critical analysis of museums to the study of botanical gardens. Museums and botanical gardens have shown us ways of organising, categorising and defining an unknown world from colonial times to the present. The exhibition offers an alternative way to rethink – and decolonise – the concept of botanical gardens and colonial approaches to nature through contemporary art. On the Nature of Botanical Gardens also inspired Evie’s own research into analysing botanical gardens from a museological perspective, and the colonial logic of musealisation, rather than simply as spaces which are comparable to museums.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS Dr Sharon Willoughby is currently the Head of Interpretation at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Sharon has a background in ecological science and her dissertation focused on the garden, scientific and environmental history of the Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne in Melbourne, Australia. Sharon worked for the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria between 1999 and 2016 where the focus of her work was interpretation planning, placemaking and community inclusion. Sharon is a member of the Decolonising Kew Working Group, formed at Kew in 2020. António Carmo Gouveia, PhD in biology, is a researcher at the Centre for Functional Ecology – University of Coimbra, Portugal. He was director of the Botanic Garden of the University of Coimbra and the Serralves Foundation Park, having been the portuguese representative by the European Botanic Gardens Consortium. He collaborates with the UNESCO Chair in Biodiversity Safeguard for Sustainable Development. Evie Evans is a culture and heritage professional working around how coloniality occupies our past, present and future. She is currently part of Framer Framed’s Action Research Group, coordinating the (De)Colonial Presence strand of programming. Evie studied Literary and Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and completed a Master’s in Museum Studies. As part of her Master’s, she did an internship at Framer Framed, assisting in the public programming for the exhibition On the Nature of Botanical Gardens. Her Master’s thesis, inspired by this exhibition, explores the colonial history of botanical gardens and their contemporary display which musealises plants.

Please feel free to alert friends and colleagues about our events. ICOMOS member or not: we will gladly keep you informed. Hope to see you soon! [Click here to subscribe to our mailing list]