Agenda

17 Apr 2026 14:00

ART ECOLOGIES Series | Botanical Revolutions: How Plants Changed the Course of Art

Aula Berengo, Dorsoduro 3246 - 30123 Venice

ART ECOLOGIES Series | Botanical Revolutions: How Plants Changed the Course of Art

17 April 2026

Sala Marino Berengo
Ca' Foscari - 1st floor 
Dorsoduro 3246 - 30123 Venice

Speaker:
Giovanni Aloi, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Discussant:
Cristina Baldacci, DFBC and NICHE, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice 

Abstract
Desired for their aesthetic beauty, sought after for their medicinal properties, harvested for their scents and flavors, or grown as essential material resources, plants are indissolubly entwined with our existence. In art it is no different: plants have played a critical role. Yet despite their significant material and conceptual contributions, plants have been sidelined in the commentary of art historians and critics. In this talk, Giovanni Aloi discusses his most recent book, Botanical Revolutions: How Plants Changed the Course of Art (2025), which outlines a global history of plants in art, focusing on the crucial moments that signaled the formation of new movements and styles, as well as the creation of media that could not have occurred without the involvement of and interaction with the vegetal world. Aloi delves deeply into the history and representation of plants in art, advocates for a change in our relationship with the botanical world, and presents an alternative history of art that foregrounds the truly indispensable contributions of plants.

Bio
Giovanni Aloi is an author, curator, educator, and maker specializing in the histories of art and politics of aesthetics in representations of nature in art. He’s the founder and Editor in Chief of "Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture" and US Correspondent for "Esse Magazine – Art + Opinion". Aloi is co-editor of the University of Minnesota series Art after Nature, and has authored several books, including Why Look at Plants? The Vegetal World in Contemporary Art (2019), Lucian Freud: Herbarium (2019), Vegetal Entwinements in Philosophy and Art: A Reader (2023, co-edited with Michael Marder), Estado VegetalPerformance and Plant-Thinking (2023), Botanical Revolutions: How Plants Changed the Course of Art (2025), and Lawn (2025). He lectures at museums and universities internationally and has taught graduate and undergraduate courses at Queen Mary University of London, Goldsmiths, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London and New York. He received his Ph.D. in natural history and contemporary art from Goldsmiths University of London and has worked as an educator at Whitechapel Art Gallery and Tate Galleries.

Zoom link

Language

The event will be held in English

Organized by

NICHE, Art Ecologies P.I. Prof. Baldacci

Link

https://unive.zoom.us/meeting/register/Ue5t_rD0QvySqBd2tVaAZA

Downloads

Poster 1592 KB

Search in the agenda