MFA Exhibit featuring HUH specimens

Later this month, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, unveils a groundbreaking new exhibit that blends art and science: Rachel Ruysch: Artist, Naturalist, and Pioneer. This is the first solo exhibition in the U.S. dedicated to the remarkable 17th-century Dutch painter, and it's not to be missed!

Rachel Ruysch, Forest Still Life with Stag Beetle and Nest (detail), 1717. Oil on canvas. Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe.
Rachel Ruysch, Forest Still Life with Stag Beetle and Nest (detail), 1717. Oil on canvas. Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe.

Developed in collaboration with Professor Charles Davis, Curator of Vascular Plants at the Harvard University Herbaria (HUH), the exhibit showcases 35 of Ruysch’s paintings displayed alongside botanical and entomological specimens from the collections of the HUH and our neighboring Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ), as well as works by other pioneering women artists.

Far more than just beautiful works of art, Ruysch’s paintings are rich with meaning, inviting viewers to explore the fragile intersection of life and death, beauty and decay, art and colonial expansion. Be sure to catch this exhibit, August 23 – December 1, 2025.

https://www.mfa.org/exhibition/rachel-ruysch-artist-naturalist-and-pioneer

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