Image by me.
For most of my twenties, I worked as an Art Historian at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In the spring of 2012, while I was spending the majority of my days cataloguing objects in the basement storage hold, the Museum installed the conceptual art piece Lines in Four Directions in Flowers by Sol LeWitt.
Image via Philadelphia Museum of Art.
This site-specific installation featured over 7,000 plantings within four flower beds in four colors, all in line with the artist’s proposal. OLIN, a landscape architecture, urban design and planning studio, executed the design using the following plants (bolded plants are native to Pennsylvania):
· White: Bellflower, Guara, Obedient Plant, White Coneflower, Phlox ‘David’
· Yellow: False Indigo, Perennial Sunflower, Yellow Coneflower, Yarrow
· Red: Red Yarrow, Blanket Flower, Red Sage, Cardinal Flower, Red Avens
· Blue: Great Blue Lobelia, Russian Sage, Sea Holly, False Indigo, Woodland Sage
Despite the fact that all of the flowers planted by OLIN were perennials, Lines in Four Directions in Flowers was on view for only two years in the Museum‘s Anne d’Harnoncourt Sculpture Garden. I remember watching the installation take shape and walking by it daily while it was on view. The exhibition renewed my appreciation for my workplace and inspired more outdoor walks to check on the flowers. Lines in Four Directions in Flowers was the first plant-based art exhibition I’d encountered that made me feel more connected to a place.
