JTF (just the facts): Published in 2024 by Roma Publications (here and here). Softcover, 21 x 29.7 cm, 112 pages, with 340 black-and-white archival photographs and drawings by the artist. Includes an essay by Clément Chéroux, a conversation between Maria Barnas and the artist, and indexes of exhibitions and plants. Design by Roger Willems. (Cover and spread shots below.)
Comments/Context: Once in a while, I run across a photobook that is so initially mystifying that it seems like a strange portal into another world. An initial flip through the pages generally leads to more questions than answers, often of the “what exactly is going on here” variety. But then my mind ultimately catches up with the artist’s just a bit and I start to comprehend some of the baffling magic that he or she is trying to show me. The “aha” moment of the lightbulb going on above my head may be invisible, but once that switch has been flipped, the artistic recognition that has taken place feels altogether surprising and almost weirdly profound. In short, I’ve been forced to think in a new way, which is one of the astonishing gifts art can sometimes deliver.
Inge Meijer’s photobook The MoMA Plant Collection is a taxonomy of exhibition installation photographs (drawn from nearly a century of shows, from 1937 to 2022) that include one or more plants. And after just a few pages of these images, the head shaking begins and the questions mount, starting with the obvious realization that we’ve utterly failed to notice or “see” these plants before. Why are these plants here? Do they have an aesthetic purpose? Are they covering up something? Were they matched with the artworks in some way? Who (perhaps a curator) decided which plants would be included and where they would be installed? Is there actually a “collection” of plants somewhere from which they were selected? The more we pay close attention to these plants, the odder the whole reality seems to become.
As it turns out, this isn’t Meijer’s first encounter with the obscure subject of museum plants. In 2019, she published The Plant Collection, a photobook selection of plant-present installation shots from the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. So not only is The MoMA Plant Collection a puzzling artifact in its own right, it is actually part of larger pattern that Meijer has identified and begun to document. Like the other “institutional critique” artists who have paid close attention to the complex way museums function, Meijer is making her own observations of museum culture with these two books, unpacking the intention behind decisions and initiatives that may have been taken for granted or were otherwise overlooked.
Since MoMA has made many of its archival photographs available digitally, it was likely a relatively straightforward process for Meijer to sift through the various exhibits across the decades and pick out the ones where plants were included. When gathered together and presented as one summarized group, it becomes remarkably clear how widespread and democratic the process of adding plants to MoMA exhibitions actually was (and continues to be). Plants were found in exhibits of Mexican ceramics, Japanese film, and Brazilian architecture, along with surveys of drawings, prints, poster art, and glass, and supporting wide ranging exhibits of collections, acquisitions, and bequests. Paintings and plants seem to have gone together most often, mixing with artists from Picasso to Rothko, with leafy additions popping up alongside Matisse, Miró, Bonnard, Cezanne, Braque, Rousseau, Dubuffet, Beckmann, Hoffman, and Johns, among others. Photographically, plants have made appearances in plenty of landmark exhibits, including important solos for Cartier-Bresson, Atget, Steichen, Lange, Eggleston, Callahan, Penn, and the Bechers, among others, and in surveys and group shows of various kinds. Apparently photography curator John Szarkowski was a botany enthusiast (who knew?), which may partially explain some of the plant inclusions during his tenure.
Essays and an interview with the artist included in The MoMA Plant Collection offer other potential plant-based logics. Aside from the practical realities of hiding of cords, outlets, and other architectural distractions and the filling of awkward empty spaces, the rationale I found most unexpected and intriguing is conceptually Modernist – the plants were included as part of a larger Modernist movement to remove “barriers between inside and outside,” creating a subtle conversation between art and nature. Another plausible explanation is essentially decorative – the plants were added to make the blank gallery spaces more inviting, in line with taste-based thinking about what might look “upscale”.
Meijer’s selections are essentially a cure for “plant blindness”, and after the aggregation of several page flips, we start to fully recognize the presence of the plants and actually begin to search them out. The foreground/background inversion taking place is tantalizing, and subtly humorous in many cases – the artworks have become secondary to our primary interest in the plants. Meijer then goes several steps further by isolating the plant forms, reimagining them as delicate line drawings, and labeling them with their scientific names. This process both amplifies the decorative motifs found in the plants (some of which have been presented on pedestals just like the artworks or cast shadows that further activate their forms and rhythms), while also making clear that they are all exotic, tropical varieties that are certainly far from home in New York; and if we want to then freight these plants with with their colonial histories, we can add yet another layer of potential institutional intention (or bias) to the dialogue.
All of this adds up to much more than an afterthought. To be sure, The MoMA Plant Collection is an unlikely study, but it somehow feels quietly unusual and memorable. Perhaps the reason we have largely failed to notice these plants in the gallery spaces is that they actually do fit in some inexplicable way, relying on an inherent link between culture and nature. Meijer’s photobook smartly forces us to look again at something we thought we had already seen, creating an elegant reveal that changes our perception of that reality.
Collector’s POV: Inge Meijer is represented by AKINCI in Amsterdam (here). Her work has little secondary market history at this point, so gallery retail remains the best option for those collectors interested in following up.
