New Perspectives on Rory McEwen: A Symposium
Event SOLD OUT
Join Sir Peter Crane, President of Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Richard Deverell, Director of Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, exhibition curator Ruth Stiff, and Flora McEwen and Christian for a morning of lively discussions exploring Rory McEwen’s distinctive contemporary style and his life and impact on the botanical art scene on both sides of the Atlantic.
$50 Members | $65 Non-Members
*3% credit card fee will apply
Morning Schedule
9:30AM: Welcome with Angela Mack, Director of the Gibbes Museum of Art
9:40AM: An introduction with Sir Peter Crane, placing Rory McEwen and his work in the context of other great botanical artists, some of whom are included in the exhibition.
10:30AM: Richard Deverell on the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew mission and purpose, with an emphasis on botanical art, incluing the Shirley Sherwood Gallery that includes many works by McEwen.
11:30AM: Conversation with Ruth Stiff, exhibition curator, Flora McEwen (daughter), and Christian McEwen (niece) on the artist's work and his personal life.
Our Speakers
Sir Peter Crane FRS is President of the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Virginia, an estate of Rachel Lambert Mellon that includes an exquisite garden as well as an exceptional library focused on plants, gardens, and landscape design. He is known internationally for his work on the diversity of plant life – its origin, fossil history, conservation, and use.
Peter Crane was at the Field Museum in Chicago from 1982-1999, and Director of The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew from 1999-2006, before being appointed University Professor at The University of Chicago. In 2009 he was recruited as Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (now Yale School of the Environment). His board service includes the Field Museum, Yale-NUS College and the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which he chaired from 2019-2022.
Peter Crane was elected to the Royal Society – the UK academy of sciences – in 1998 and was knighted in the UK for services to horticulture and conservation in 2004. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences, a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and a Member of the German Academy Leopoldina. He is the recipient of several honorary degrees from universities in the UK and US, including an honorary doctorate of science from Cambridge University in the UK. He received the International Prize for Biology in December 2014.
Richard Deverell, CBE started as Director of Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in 2012 following 20 years at the BBC.
At the BBC he spent a decade in BBC News and ran the BBC News websites before revamping the BBC’s children’s channels with a mission to raise the quality and impact of programming. He then helped to launch BBC North at Salford Quays.
Since joining Kew, he has refocused Kew’s strategy towards developing and delivering solutions to the biodiversity and climate crises. This has led to significant growth of Kew Science, the digitisation in full of Kew’s collections, expansion of post-graduate education and more prominent science and conservation narratives to visitors.
He is a passionate advocate for the power of plants and fungi to help solve the critical challenges facing humanity in the 21st Century. He is an official Champion for Food Forever, a global initiative that aims to secure biodiversity for the benefit of food security around the world.
He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge and is married with 3 children.
Ruth Stiff is the Curator of International Exhibitions at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (London), responsible for mounting and traveling exhibitions throughout North America and Europe and hosted by such venues as the Smithsonian Institution, Chicago’s Field Museum, and the New York Public Library, among others. She has served as guest curator with a number of North America’s major museums, and has lectured throughout North America and Europe.
A member of the Board of Trustees of the Mona Bismarck American Center for Art & Culture in Paris from 2007 to 2017, Ruth also served as the Center’s Curator of Exhibitions, mounting such diverse exhibitions as: The Wyeths: Three Generations of American Art and Buttons: Artistic, Historical and Cultural Phenomena from the Loïc Allio Collection.
She is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London and holds a Master’s Degree in the Arts from Dartmouth College.
Flora McEwen Brooks is a director of Rory McEwen Limited and, along with her 3 siblings, responsible for the Rory McEwen Archive.
As the eldest of Rory's 4 children she was raised listening to Rory's music and surrounded by his paintings and sculpture. Their family homes in Chelsea in central London and in Scotland were the meeting place for some of the most interesting and prominent artists and musicians of the '60's and 70's.
Flora went to college in NYC where she studied fashion and then worked for the designer Halston. Later she retrained as a therapist, specialising in addiction issues, a career that lasted more than 30 years. In 2020 she retired from that role to focus full-time on preserving and sharing her father's legacy.
Christian McEwen is a freelance writer, workshop leader, and cultural activist, originally from the UK. She is the author of a number of books including Jo’s Girls: Tomboy Tales of High Adventure; World Enough & Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down, and Sparks from the Anvil: the Smith College Poetry Interviews. Her latest book is In Praise of Listening: A Gathering of Stories, which came out last October.
