ART IN THE GARDEN
Queens Botanical Garden presents exhibitions created by local artists in the Visitor & Administration Building Gallery as well as outdoors throughout the Garden.
Learn more about our current exhibitions below.
Ongoing Exhibitions
Healing Leaves: The Myth of the Orisha Ossanhe By Luzia Castaneda
Coming October 7, 2023
The work began in the Poconos Mountains in Pennsylvania in the summer of 2020. I was painting and a leaf fell on my watercolor – it was a calling. Over the next year, I explored different forests in the USA and Brazil, looking for leaves that could create a wonderful beauty on top of my watercolor, and then took photos of these combinations. That was the inspiration to tell the Ossanhe myth through leaf paintings.
The Healing Leaves: The Myth of the Orisha Ossanhe (the Afro-Brazilian divinity of healing and mystery) is a series of 16 photographs and 21 paintings that explain the Afro-Brazilian myth of two orishas—Ossanhe and Xangô—whom both want to possess the healing powers of leaves.
This exhibition was made possible with public funds from the Queens Art Funds, a re-grant program supports by New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and administered by New York Foundation for the Arts.
Orchid Paintings: 2017~2022 By Chemin Hsiao
On view in the V&A Gallery
Since his exhibition “Sitting with the Garden” and the 1st
brochure/banner cover painting for the annual program “Taiwan: A World of Orchids” at the Queens Botanical Garden in 2017, visual artist Chemin Hsiao painted various genera of orchids including Phalaenopsis, Oncidium, Miltonia and Brassia. Many of the paintings exhibited in this gallery were created by direct observation onsite during the annual Orchid Show at the Queens Botanical Garden between 2017~2022. This is also the first time the original brochure cover paintings for the orchid show are displayed together with the corresponding brochure.
Botanical Boombox By Sherwin Banfield
On view in the QBG Farm
Botanical Boombox is a Sustainable Mini Greenhouse Boombox sculpture that houses a miniature public housing ecosystem amplifying dreams and stories of personal growth and struggle. Inside this Boombox greenhouse is an arrangement of diverse plants that symbolize the voice of voiceless, individual lived experience by local Hip Hop Artist, sprouting through the redlined concrete of Queensbridge Houses as a metaphoric photosynthesis.
SPREAD LOVE: A Mini Mural Installation
By Unfamous NY
On view in the Meadow
This mini mural installation serves as a tribute to the swift tempo of life in New York City. Amidst its hustle, we can easily become adrift, neglecting our connection to our surroundings and losing sight of our connection with Mother Nature. The city that never sleeps always has a story to tell and this project provides the city’s artists with the space and community to make their storytelling possible. As brushstrokes meet wall, a visual narrative unfolds, reminding all who pass by of the intrinsic link between the urban pulse and the heartbeat of our environment. Sunflower Season at QBG featured artists include Renda Writer (@rendawriter), Calicho Arevalo (@calichoart), Georgia Violet (@georgiaviolett), and Bhabi (@beeapples). Learn more about the installation.
Conocer y Compartir – We Find Each Other
By Mobile Print Power
On view in the Arboretum / Meadow
Conocer y Compartir – We Find Each Other is a series of illuminated sculptures inspired by the lampposts from the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The sculptures feature screenprinted artwork created with visitors to QBG in April 2019. The project was previously on view in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.
Wonder Garden 
By Pasqualina Azzarello
On view at the Education Building
Artist Pasqualina Azzarello (@pasqualinaazzarello), with help from Queens Botanical Garden summer interns and participants from Junior Naturalists program, painted a beautiful mural on the exterior walls of our Education Building, filling the space with everything the Garden is about: people, plants, and cultures. Check it out in person during open hours.
PAST EXHIBITIONS
2023
Bring Your Own Belongs By Su Ji Lee
Was on view in the V&A Gallery Summer 2023
BYOB (Bring Your Own Belongings) is an ongoing project, where the selected community members are photographed with a cherished belonging that holds significance in representing their identity, cultural background, or personal interests. The project aims to visualize the intimacy people have with their possessions and provide an intimate bonding experience in the presence of the photographic lens. As the grant awardee of the Asian American Arts Alliance’s 2023 What Can We Do? Program. Within each photograph, the subjects’ postures are gracefully infused with the natural motions derived from the practice of tai-chi.
All the Way to Hell by Eliza Evans
Was on view at the Forest Triangle from 2020 through June 5, 2023
This activist art project sits at at the intersection of property law, fossil fuel business practice, and bureaucracy. By giving away mineral rights to as many people as possible, All the Way to Hell is disrupting fracking on a small property in Oklahoma. The aggressive fragmentation of the property will inhibit fossil fuel interest in it as it makes mineral rights as inconvenient and expensive to acquire as possible. This piece converts hundreds of individual gestures into a new form of environmental resistance.
Earth Day Drawings by Bangladesh Institute of Performing Arts (BIPA)
Was on view at V&A Art Gallery on April 22, 2023 during the Climate Arts Festival
This collection of nature-inspired art was created for Earth Day by children participating in the programs of the Bangladesh Institute of Performing Arts (BIPA). As a low-lying riverine nation and one of the world’s most densely populated countries, Bangladesh is deeply affected by the climate crisis. Science experts estimate that Bangladesh could lose over 10% of its land and close to 20 million people (about the population of New York state) could be displaced due to rising sea levels. As you enjoy this exhibit, we invite you to reflect on the global implications of our own local actions, as well as celebrate and protect the people of Bangladesh and other nations feeling the impact of climate change.
Kaleidoscope by Graciela Cassel
Was on view at the Forest Explorers Triangle June 25, 2022 through January 28, 2023
A surprising, multiplied reality will awaken dreams of new possibilities in viewers when they look through Kaleidoscope. The viewer will discover different dimensions amongst the trees, in the sky, and in their own image within the Queens Botanical Garden landscape.
Infinite Inspiration
by Deborah Sudran
Was on view at the Visitor & Administration Building Gallery July 2022 through January 8, 2023
Deborah Sudran found infinite inspiration in nature and experienced that inspiration for decades. Sudran, who passed away in 2020, was not an ordinary nature painter, but painted out of a love for the colors, forms and space that nature presents, particularly up close. Rarely is there a horizon line seen in these works for the viewer’s vision is immersed in the elements and forms of plants, and though her paintings are painterly, her allover composition creates almost a carpet of color and texture.
In her travels throughout the Americas, Sudran photographed the plant tableaus that delighted and inspired her paintings. Her works transcending their photographic origins to an abstraction and hues of nature seen up close, whether in botanical gardens, deserts or forests.
Through her paintings Sudran sought to communicate her emotional response to nature with compelling color and powerful imagery. Queens Botanical Garden is thankful for the gift of these works from the Estate of Deborah Sudran, and for the support of Viridian Artists gallery where Sudran participated in exhibits for many years. We hope that Deborah Sudran’s legacy will prompt the viewer to look closer at nature and share in her inspiration.
Spread Love: A Mini Mural Installation
presented by Unfamous NY
This outdoor exhibit was on view September 14 through December 11, 2022
Live Painting – September 15-24, 2022
Opening Reception – Saturday, September 24, 2022
The exhibition features an array of multidisciplinary local artists coming together to create a variety of mini murals with themes ranging from environmental awareness to mental health awareness, and more. Murals as a medium transcend the boundaries of the city and allow artists to showcase issues that matter most to local communities in a coordinated effort. The rise of graffiti and murals in New York City was made possible through the interconnectedness provided by the public, allowing artists to operate in harmonious efforts and in targeted locations. “Spread Love: A Mini Mural Installation” honors the roots of this movement by assembling various artists from around New York City to congregate, create, and curate the various central themes that matter most to them.
Unfamous NY is a local multi-disciplinary art and lifestyle collective based in Queens, New York. Driven to create lasting experiences while representing the unique cultural identity of our city, we continue to develop our footprints in the New York urban art world. CLICK HERE to learn more.
大地肌理/Earth Skin by Yiyi Wei
This display was spread over the garden (Fragrance Walk, Orchard, Farm)
大地肌理/Earth Skin molds the surface of the earth with molten glass. The viscous glass flows over the compost made at the Queen’s Botanical Garden, creating a set of topographical castings that participants are encouraged to look, smell, and touch.
The title is inspired by one of the Chinese names for ‘texture’ ‘肌理’(jī lǐ). The character ‘肌’meaning ‘skin’ or ‘muscle’, draws a poetic connection between our body and the earth. Through participation, the project aims to (re)connect our body with the earth that nourishes us, interconnects us and the earth that we will return to— the earth our ancestors walked, who maybe, in the smell of earth, are walking with us still.
AMPLIFY: AnkhLave Garden Project
This outdoor exhibit was on view June 25 – October 1
Sherwin Banfield’s Botanical Boombox was extended through October 30
The annual AnkhLave Garden Project is a fellowship where Queens-based Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) artists create installations in a natural community space as an alternative studio and exhibition space. For the third year at Queens Botanical Garden, AnkhLave has selected five fellows to create site specific art installations throughout the grounds of QBG. By presenting artists and art-making in a non-traditional setting like Queens Botanical Garden, AnkhLave aims to promote artists of color who represent and reflect the Garden’s visiting audience.
Curated by former AnkhLave Garden Project Fellow Cecilia André.
Care/Repair: Mending the Circle
This group exhibition by Southeast Queens Arts Alliance was on view in the Visitor & Administration Building Gallery
Friday, April 22 through Saturday, May 28
Care/Repair: Mending the Circle is not just an exhibition, it is a statement and conversation about human cooperation and our mutual interdependence. Care is fundamental to the human condition. It is manifest in myriad acts of kindness and labors of love. All humans are engaged in care activities, both as receivers of care and in most cases as care givers. And we care most for those that are emotionally, physically and culturally closer to us. What are the boundaries of our caring? How far should the boundaries of caring be expanded?
Participating artists include: Damali Abrams • Natali Bravo-Barbee • Sherese Francis • Jacqueline Herranz-Brooks • Chemin Hsiao • Marvenia Knight • Rejin Leys • Angela Miskis • Elizabeth Velazquez • Shenna Vaughn
Curated by Shilpi Chandra
Here, There, and EverywhereAn Outdoor Exhibition by Artists of Kew Gardens
This outdoor exhibit was on view on the Queens Botanical Garden perimeter fence along Main Street
December 10, 2021 – May 15, 2022
This exhibition was born of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic stress and political division it engendered. With shops, restaurants, theatres and museums shuttered, occupations lost or on hold, neighbors separated and families unable to gather, normal life seemed to have come to a halt. How do you cultivate hope and strength and remain positive and affirming when everything around you seems to point in the opposite direction?
This is when artists step in. They remind us of the beauty of the world, its strangeness and its transience, and employ the power of imagination and experience to shape sensibility and attempt to provide respite and hope. It is our hope that as you pass by you will stop to enjoy, reflect and, perhaps, be inspired to create by the work of these artists who, like all of us, found their world turned upside down.
Shapes of the Garden by Chemin Hsiao
Was on view in the Visitor & Administration Building Gallery
December 3, 2021 – April 10, 2022
Shapes of the Garden is a series of woodblock prints inspired by the ever-changing shapes and colors of Queens Botanical Garden. Based on the Japanese ukiyo-e Mokuhanga (Woodblock Print) tradition, Chemin Hsiao’s prints capture the seasonal transition throughout the Spring and Fall of 2021.
This exhibition is made possible (in part) by the Queens Council on the Arts with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
2021
Spirit Sees Red by M.E. Guadalupe Rubi
On view in the Visitor & Administration Building
September 18 through November 21, 2021
Spirit Sees Red is a meditation on memory: the stories we inherit and those we create to remember. Drawing inspiration from the First Nations tradition of the sacredness of the color red, Latin folklore, and the desire to reclaim an Indigenous narrative, artist M.E. Guadalupe Rubi embraces botany and the natural world as a source of healing and reconciliation.
This exhibition is made possible by the New York City Artist Corps.
Walking Broadway: Signs of Nature on the Wickquasgeck Trail by Jessica Maffia
June 25 through September 6, 2021
Jessica Maffia’s project followed a walk along the length of Broadway in Manhattan, the Bronx, and northward, where she photographed an element of nature on every block. The series asks the viewer to look more closely and explore the wisdom of the non-human and the poetry of the natural world.
AnkhLave Garden Project
June 18 through September 12, 2021
The AnkhLave Garden Project returned with five Queens-based Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) artists who create temporary public art installations in a natural community space as an alternative studio and exhibition space.
We ❤ Worms Student Art Exhibit 
On view in the Visitor & Administration Building
Through August 1
Organized by the NYC Compost Project hosted by QBG, The We ❤ Worms Student Art Exhibit features over 30 student art pieces, ranging from drawings, painting, music, videos, jokes, poems, and more, to showcase one of Earth’s greatest allies for soil health: worms.
Invasive Species
By Sam Scoggins
On View in the Visitor & Administration Building
April 16 through June 13
Artist Sam Scoggins draws from the tradition of botanical cyanotypes, an early photographic technique, to explore what we define as “invasive species.” Scoggins’ large scale prints present these plants found in the New York City Watershed and Hudson River in a new light.
This exhibit is made possible with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council.
Invasive Species by Sam Scoggins
On the Inside 
Looking Out
By the 2020 AnkhLave Garden Project Fellows
On view in the Visitor & Administration Building
January 22 through April 4
The annual AnkhLave Garden Project is a fellowship where six Queens-based Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) artists create installations in a natural community space as an alternative studio and exhibition space. For the 2nd annual Fellowship, six female artists of color with immigration journeys to the US had the unique challenge of creating and displaying their work in a natural environment. This resulted in a public art show that ran through summer 2020. Now, months later, they come together again, displaying relics from the initial exhibit along with new and continued explorations that are in conversation with the original public works.
This exhibit was made possible by the Queens Council on the Arts with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council.
Spirit Sees Red by M.E. Guadalupe Rubi
On view in the Visitor & Administration Building
September 18 through November 21, 2021
Spirit Sees Red is a meditation on memory: the stories we inherit and those we create to remember. Drawing inspiration from the First Nations tradition of the sacredness of the color red, Latin folklore, and the desire to reclaim an Indigenous narrative, artist M.E. Guadalupe Rubi embraces botany and the natural world as a source of healing and reconciliation.
This exhibition is made possible by the New York City Artist Corps.
2020
With Every Fiber of Our Being by Soraya Navia
On view in the Visitor & Administration Building
September 22 through December 27
With Every Fiber of Our Being is an ocean conservation-focused exhibition that invites us to reflect on the issue of pollution from the perspective of the marine animals directly impacted by plastic waste. Fiber artist and graphic designer Soraya Navia transforms everyday materials into upcycled canvases that become both the foundation and inspiration for hand-embroidered portraits of underwater life.
This exhibition is made possible (in part) by the Queens Council on the Arts with public funds from theNew York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Click the button below to learn more about the artist and exhibition!
AnkhLave Arts at Queens Botanical Garden
On view July 21 through September 8
AnkhLave Arts Alliance works to to provide inclusive representation of people of diverse ethnicities within the contemporary art conversation. AnkhLave has selected six Queens-based artists to create site specific art installations within the grounds of Queens Botanical Garden (QBG). By presenting artists and art-making in a nontraditional setting like the QBG, AnkhLave aims to promote artists of color who represent and reflect the Garden’s visiting audience.
This project is made possible by the Queens Council on the Arts with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council.
Click the button below to learn about each artist and preview artwork by AnkhLave Arts Alliance at Queens Botanical Garden!
Recollections: Highlights from Our Permanent Collection
On view January 17 through March 22
Visitor & Administration Building Gallery
FREE
As we look forward to a new decade, Queens Botanical Garden is celebrating the ten-year anniversary of our Visitor & Administration Building Gallery by taking the time to look back and highlight the art and artists that graced our space during the last decade.
Recollections presents a selection of highlights from our permanent collection of works donated by artists who have exhibited here starting in 2009. These diverse works visualize our mission of connecting people, plants, and cultures through a multitude of media, subject, and inspirations.
Featured Artists:
Jane Ingram Allen
Joyce and Ed Morrill
Shari Romar
Audrey Gottlieb
Barbara E. Leven
H. David Stein
Gennadyi Gurman
Iandry Randriamandroso
Paul Lin
Emily Barnett
Tatiana Arocha
Carol Reid
Frank Buddingh
Frank Buddingh
Manuel Macarrulla
Vikram Dogra
Zimmer
Chemin Hsiao
Shahryar Shahamat
Laura Fantini
Adele Epstein – PWP
Serkan Altinoz
Jamie Pesavento
Amber Vittoria
Darya Warner
Nancy Paredes
2019
Marbles in the Valley
by Nancy Paola Paredes
On view in the Visitor & Administration Building
September 13 through December 22
Marbles in the Valley is an exhibition of prints and photographs that portrays nostalgic landscapes reminiscent of the native countries of the borough’s diverse communities. Born and raised in Corona, Queens to Honduran parents, artist Nancy Paredes depicts the distorted memories of immigrants and the imaginings of a first generation.
This exhibition centers around a series of collagraphs of abstract
landscapes printed from the layering of plastic shopping bags.
Accompanying the collagraphs are otherworldly photographs that
extend into a different timeline, offering a second perspective of these
familiar places.
Grown-Up Flowers By PLAYLAB, INC.
On view throughout the Garden
Through Thursday, September 12
Giant inflatable flowers greet you at Queens Botanical Garden! Created by PLAYLAB, INC., “Grown Up Flowers” imagines flowers inflated many times their normal size, giving visitors a new perspective on these iconic and playful representations of beauty. Take selfies with four larger-than-life flowers for a fantastical time at the Garden.
In Full Bloom
By Darya Warner, Amber Vittoria, and Jamie Pesavento
March 29 through August 25
In Full Bloom presents the work of three artists, Darya Warner, Amber Vittoria, and Jamie Pesavento. Each artist has created a series of works inspired by the shape and form of flowers, plants, and bodies in nature.
Organic Emergence
By Serkan Altinoz
December 1, 2018 through March 10, 2019
Artist Serkan Altinoz draws upon traditional Turkish paper marbling to create a new technique that integrates enamel paints, chemical solvents, and fire. The series of resulting paintings in Organic Emergence illustrate forms like flowers, butterflies, and fibrous tree-like structures.
Organic Emergence was curated in partnership with Samadhi Advisors.
2018
IMPRESSIVE PLANTS, SELECTIONS FROM OUR HERBARIUM
August 24 through November 18, 2018
From August 24 through November 18, explore the large variety of plant species that grow at QBG through this preserved collection of specimens.
Our Botanical World
By Professional Women Photographers Group Exhibit
May 4 through August 5, 2018
Our Botanical World showcases curated photographs by members of the Professional Women
Photographers group inspired by the botanical world and its impact on human life through all seasons.
Photo Credit: “Buy My Onions” by Adele Epstein
HOPE
By Laura Fantini
January 9 through April 29, 2018
In HOPE, Laura Fantini’s intricately detailed pencil drawings of seeds, which she has collected throughout NYC and Italy, explore the fundamental power of seeds, new beginnings, and growth.
2017
Borderlines
By Shahryar Shahamat
September 29 thru December 31, 2017
Through his paintings in Borderlines, artist Shahryar Shahamat shares his experience—boundaries and challenges—as a resident of New York City for the past seven years.
和 花 園 坐 著
HÉ HUĀ YUÁN ZUÒ ZHE
SITTING WITH THE GARDEN
By Che Min Hsiao
June 30 through September 24, 2017
Sitting with the Garden is a collection of site-specific watercolor paintings by Che Min Hsiao, a Taiwanese painter based in Queens. Viewers will experience the beauty of Queens Botanical Garden filtered through the artist’s memories of nature in Taiwan.
This project is made possible (in part) by the Queens Council on the Arts with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
The Structure of Nature
By Zimer
March 10 through June 18, 2017
Zimer learned the art of graffiti from the underground walls of Queens, New York. After developing his personal aesthetic, he increasingly adopted fine art principles into his paintings. The intertwined influences of Graffiti and Art History on his style have transcended it beyond traditional classification.
The Structure of Nature exhibited over a dozen paintings and a site-specific mural that fuse his modern, graffiti-style paint application with QBG’s LEED™ Platinum Certified Building through traditional still life and landscape subject matter.
In addition to exhibiting in galleries and creating murals, Zimer received his BA in architecture. His studio practice has included sculpture, fashion, furniture, animation and graphic design. Zimer has painted murals all over the world including: The New York Auto Show, Comic Con, The World Trade Center, Philadelphia Tattoo Convention, London’s South Bank, and the Northside Arts Festival.
2016
EAST OF EAST RIVER
By VIKRAM DOGRA
November 22, 2016 through February 26, 2017
Queens based photographer, Vikram Dogra has lived in Astoria since 2000. He arrived as an immigrant from India in 1982 and has lived in West Virginia, North Carolina and Washington, DC. In the cradle of the multicultural landscape of Queens he found a place to love and belong. East of East River began as a photo series recording the unique makeup of both landscape and the people of Astoria and Long Island City and, eventually became a self-published photography book in 2015. These photographs capture a changing landscape of the neighborhoods from 2004-2015. The photographs combining street and fine-arts photography offer a unique and historical portrait of the ever changing neighborhoods.
FANTASÍAS Y CARNAVALES
By MANUEL MACARRULLA
August 9 through November 13, 2016
Artist Manuel Macarrulla exhibits hand-crafted masks, drawings, and paintings inspired by carnivals and fantasies that incorporate nature and animal imagery, as well as his Dominican heritage.
SANCTUARIES
By TATIANA AROCHA
May 3 through August 7, 2016
Visual artist Tatiana Arocha’s SANCTUARIES is a series of large-scale, intricately-layered reinventions of natural Colombian landscape, hand-constructed on digital canvases, printed, and arrayed into immersive murals. Both refuge and warning, SANCTUARIES uses a combination of natural specimens, human artifacts, and modern technologies to evoke a rainforest that is as lush as it is imperiled.
PORTRAITS OF TALL FRIENDS
By FRANK BUDDINGH’ & CAROL REID
February 16 through May 1, 2016
The Portraits of Tall Friends exhibit is a valentine in sculpture and photography, inspired by the amazing, abstract beauty of trees that live among us. It celebrates TreeSpeakArtist Frank Buddingh’ and photographer Carol Reid’s life-long bond with trees, and invites you to experience these great friends of mankind as remarkable works of art.
A SCORE IN GRAPHITE AND BLUE
By MAYEN ALCANTARA
October 27, 2015 through January 31, 2016
A unique combination of both visual and aural art, Mayen Alcantara’s intimate piece will take the audience on a journey through Queens. The multimedia exhibit is a series of sound installations, played on modified music boxes, and includes drawings and graphic musical scores. To create each piece, Mayen and a Queens resident wear “seismograph” devices to trace movements and gestures into markings, which Alcantara then turns into sheet music ribbons for participants to handcrank through music boxes. This collection of transcriptions is rooted in the moment when oral storytelling traditions overlap with modern-day record keeping.