“Radical Botany” Positions Flowers as Symbols of Power, Memory, and Commerce

Now on view within and around Staten Island’s Alice Austen House, “Radical Botany: The Politics of Flowers” gathers the work of artists who use flowers to think through power, protest, and social life. Co-curated by Dr. Susan Bright and Hedy van Erp, the exhibition spans photography, video, collage, drawing, installation, and sculpture, bringing together both contemporary and historical pieces.

The show addresses flowers as symbols shaped by politics, labor, memory, and commerce—rather than something merely ornamental. Across “Radical Botany,” florals are tied to questions of identity, inequality, and control, whether through arrangement, display, or decay. Throughout, the message reads: flowers have long blossomed with meaning beyond the decorative.

The history of Alice Austen House makes it a fitting place for the exhibition, especially during Pride. Set in the former home and grounds of the prolific, pioneering female photographer Alice Austen, the museum develops the narrative of photography alongside gender, sexuality, and domestic life. Austen lived there for three decades with her partner, Gertrude Tate, and the house and park are nationally designated as a site of LGBTQ+ history.

The Queer Ecologies Garden—a “wellspring of creativity and a place of refuge for Austen and her largely queer circle,” as Victoria Munro, executive director of Alice Austen House, describes it—builds on that context with changing floral arrangements that are part of the exhibition. Developed with the New York Restoration Project and Pratt Institute’s Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, the garden itself acts as a statement of growth and rebellion.