The New York Botanical Garden has established a new Humanities Research Institute within its LuEsther T. Mertz Library. And it's a great idea. The institute will bring together NYBG staff, visiting scholars, and graduate student fellows to study landscape and garden design and history; art history; cultural anthropology; environmental policy; urban social history; and urban ecology and the changing nature of cities.
The mission is to promote new ideas about humans and their relationship with nature and the environment. NYBG CEO Gregory Long noted that the NYBG's focus has been on botanical exploration in the wild and cultivation through horticulture. "With this new Institute," he said, "we are expanding our scope to include broader research topics that the LIbrary is fully equipped to support, and we are looking forward to interacting with scholars in disciplines that sit adjacent to our traditional interests."
In the next three years, the NYBG will sponsor year-long fellowships for emerging pre-and post-doctoral students from a number of disciplines, and the fellowships are open to graduate students from around the world. The Institute will also sponsor one symposium every year. The first one, "Women and the City: From the Landscape Perspective," will take place on June 20th of this year. It is tied to two exhibitions this year, Groundbreakers: Great American Gardens and the Women Who Designed Them (May 17-Sept 7) and The Changing of Nature of Cities (November 7).
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