Botanische Gärten als Ausstellung

Abstract

As places of recreation and pleasure for the urban bourgeoisie, botanical gardens in the late nineteenth century staged elaborately designed landscape imaginaries of primordiality and wilderness. Far more than museums, these exhibition sites aimed at sensual and physical experience – with their specific types of planting, spectacular scenery and glass architecture. Unlike academic collections they did not work with a systematic display, but with scenographic visual and auditory means. In recent years, artists and curators have focused on the illusionary spaces of botanical gardens. Colonial involvements or the display of plants that are considered exotic have become the starting point of artistic deconstruction, as well as the hierarchization of creatures and species.

Keywords

• Ausstellung
• Sammlung
• Kuratieren
• Szenografie
• Botanische Gärten