The Dumbarton Oaks Symposium ‘The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century’ was timed to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the Rare Book Room, whose holdings are particularly strong in botanical publications from this period. To celebrate the anniversary of the Rare Book Room, two Harvard interns, Jasmine Casart and Deirdre Moore, worked with special projects librarian Sarah Cahalan on a physical exhibit of rare botanicals that spanned the Main House and Library. The exhibit covers such topics as developments in botanical illustration; new technologies of plant transportation; the narratives of botanical explorers; Linnaean taxonomy; and economic botany.
An online version of the exhibit can be viewed here.