Events

    2023 Apr 22

    Tour: Frederick Law Olmsted and the Arnold Arboretum

    10:30am to 11:45am

    Location: 

    Hunnewell Visitor Center, Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston

    Frederick Law Olmsted designed the Arnold Arboretum and played an important role in its genesis as a public park. Join docent Bill Beizer for a tour identifying the elements of the Arboretum that best reflect Olmsted's philosophy and design approach.

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    2023 Mar 23

    Plant Exploration: Then and Now

    6:30pm to 8:00pm

    Location: 

    Arnold Arboretum, Weld Hill Research Building, 1300 Centre Street, Boston

    The Arnold Arboretum has been collecting plants from around the world for 150 years, but plant exploration today looks very different than it did in the 1800s. From changes in collecting practices to an evolving relationship between the Arboretum and its international partners, a lot has changed in the last century. Join Head of the Library and Archives Lisa Pearson and Keeper of the Living Collections Michael Dosmann to learn what these trips were like in the days of yore, and what they are like now.

    ...

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    2023 Feb 18

    Tour: Witch-Hazel Walk

    1:00pm to 2:15pm

    Location: 

    Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston

    Join a docent tour through the Arboretum looking for the vibrant colors of the witch-hazel flowers. Learn about plants native to China and Japan, those from the Ozarks and Mississippi, and even one that was introduced right here at the Arnold Arboretum! Dress warmly and wear boots for a 75-minute tour on and off the paths.

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    2023 Feb 14

    Tour : Witch-Hazel Walk

    1:00pm to 2:15pm

    Location: 

    Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston

    Bring your Valentine on a docent -led tour through the Arboretum looking for the vibrant colors of the witch-hazel flowers. Learn about plants native to China and Japan, those from the Ozarks and Mississippi, and even one that was introduced right here at the Arnold Arboretum! Dress warmly and wear boots for a 75-minute tour on and off the paths.

    Learn more and RSVP.

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    2023 Feb 03

    Tour: Witch-Hazels with Andrew Gapinski

    1:00pm to 2:30pm

    Location: 

    Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston

    In the Arnold Arboretum, there is something blooming every month of the year—including February! Join Andrew Gapinski, Director of Horticulture, to explore the beauty of the Arboretum’s witch-hazel family collection and its captivating history of development, evaluation, and scientific study here at the Arboretum.

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    2023 Jan 26

    Book Talk: Wicked Plants by Amy Stewart

    7:00pm to 8:00pm

    Location: 

    Arnold Arboretum—Online

    In her New York Times bestseller Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities, Amy Stewart takes on Mother Nature’s most appalling creations. It’s an A to Z of plants that kill, maim, intoxicate, and otherwise offend. Drawing on history, medicine, science, and legend, Stewart presents tales of bloodcurdling botany that will entertain, alarm, and enlighten even the most intrepid gardeners and nature lovers.

    ...

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    2022 Oct 25

    Obsessions: Fellow Organisms in the Arnold Arboretum

    7:00pm to 8:30pm

    Location: 

    Online or at Weld Hill Research Building, 1300 Centre St., Boston

    Join the Arnold Arboretum’s Director William (Ned) Friedman for the annual Director’s Series! To celebrate the Arboretum’s sesquicentennial, this year’s series will explore the Magic and Meaning of a Garden of Trees. Over the course of four sessions, we will trace the Arnold’s significance in the landscape architecture movement, value for the people of Boston, and leadership in creating global connections between plants and people. This final session will feature a talk from Director Friedman on fellow organisms in the Arboretum.

    ...

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    2022 Oct 15

    Olmsted: Bicentennial Perspectives (Day 2)

    9:00am to 5:00pm

    Location: 

    Arnold Arboretum, Weld Hill Research Building, 1300 Centre St., Boston

    The Harvard University Graduate School of Design, in partnership with the Arnold Arboretum, is hosting a two-day academic conference as part of the national Olmsted 200 celebration. While Olmsted was central to the conceptual formation of the degree program in landscape architecture at Harvard University and the design of the Arnold Arboretum, the interpretive ambitions of the conference are anything but parochial.

    Day 2 of the conference (Saturday, October 15) will take place at the Arnold Arboretum’s Weld Hill Research Building, 1300 Centre St, Boston, MA 02131.

    ...

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    2022 Sep 13

    Journeys: The Arnold Arboretum Meets the World’s Plants and Peoples

    7:00pm to 8:30pm

    Location: 

    Weld Hill Research Building, Arnold Arboretum, 1300 Centre St., Boston

    Join the Arnold Arboretum’s Director William (Ned) Friedman for the annual Director's Series! To celebrate the Arboretum's sesquicentennial, this year's series will explore the Magic and Meaning of a Garden of Trees. Over the course of four sessions, we will trace the Arnold’s significance in the landscape architecture movement, value for the people of Boston, and leadership in creating global connections between plants and people.

    This session will include brief presentations and a moderated panel. The program is free and is offered both in person and livestreamed.

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    2022 Jun 26

    MassQ Ball 2022: Origin | Making of Ceremonial Vessels

    1:00pm to 3:00pm

    Location: 

    Hemlock Hill and Conifer Collection, Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston

    Led by Bengali culture worker Pampi, this audience participatory workshop allows attendees to weave love letters into hand-crafted ceremonial vessels for their loved ones. Vessels will be fashioned out of natural materials sourced from the Arboretum grounds and displayed in the MassQ Ball on July 9.

    Learn more and RSVP for this event.

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    2022 Mar 29

    Celebrating a Sesquicentennial: The Founding of the Arnold Arboretum

    2:00pm to 3:00pm

    Location: 

    Livestreamed or at Weld Hill Research Building, 1300 Centre St., Boston

    The Arnold Arboretum was founded on Friday, March 29, 1872. Exactly 150 years later, we invite you to join Lisa Pearson, Head of the Arboretum Library and Archives, for a special sesquicentennial lecture! Pearson will discuss the earliest benefactors of the Arboretum, the events surrounding the founding of the institution, and the busy first two decades during which the infrastructure and living collections were installed on the grounds.

    This event will also be livestreamed to YouTube. To sign up for the virtual livestream instead,...

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    2022 Mar 12

    Olmsted and Yosemite: Civil War, Abolition, and the National Park Idea

    2:30pm to 4:00pm

    Location: 

    Online or at Weld Hill Research Building, 1300 Centre St., Boston

    Just in time for the Arboretum's sesquicentennial and the bicentennial of the birth of pioneering landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, authors Rolf Diamant and Ethan Carr will speak on their recent book, "Olmsted and Yosemite: Civil War, Abolition, and the National Park Idea." They'll offer a new interpretation of how the American park—urban and national—came to figure so prominently in our cultural identity, and why this more complex and inclusive story deserves to be told.

    ...

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    2021 Nov 13

    Harvard Dance Center Showing: Initiation – In Love Solidarity

    4:00pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Dance Center—Online or in-person

    Initiation – In Love Solidarity is a choreographic narrative exploring the embodiment of the Middle Passage, and the resilience and evolving identities of women in the African diaspora. A film component of the work was created at historic sites in New England related to the transatlantic slave trade and emancipation. The imagery of the cowrie shell is present throughout, chosen as an emblem of the transformative identity of the Black female body.

    Saturday, November 13, 4pm & 7pm: ...

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    2021 Mar 08

    "Every Pecan Tree": Trees, Meaning, and Memory in Enslaved People’s Lives

    7:00pm

    Location: 

    Arnold Arboretum—Online

    This is the third lecture in the Arnold Arboretum's 2021 Director's Lecture Series. Tiya Miles takes up the pecan tree as inspiration for exploring the meaning of trees in the lives of enslaved African Americans. Using a family heirloom, slave narratives, oral histories, and missionary records, her talk underscores the importance of trees in the Black experience of captivity and resistance, ultimately revealing the centrality of the natural world to Black, and indeed human, survival.

    ...

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    2021 Mar 06

    A History of Path-Making at the Arnold Arboretum

    2:00pm

    Location: 

    Arnold Arboretum—Online

    At the time of its founding in 1872, the land on which the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University is sighted was a patchwork of farmland and forest. As the Arboretum was planted, pathways were developed to lead people through the picturesque landscape. As the landscape developed, economies shifted, wars took place, and directors changed. Each of these factors subtly influenced shifts in the park’s path system. Join the Arnold Arboretum on Zoom with Jared Rubinstein as he reveals the layers of change in this beloved landscape.

    ...

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    2020 Oct 15

    Astronauts: Women on the Final Frontier

    7:00pm

    Location: 

    Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian—Online

    The first person who will set foot on Mars is alive right now. We believe this, but even if we're wrong we know the first crew to arrive there will look nothing like the ones that landed on the Moon fifty years ago.

    Our world has changed for the better, and ASTRONAUTS tells the story of the women who built this better world. The main character and narrator is Mary Cleave, an astronaut you may not have heard of. It's not because so many people have been to space; only a few hundred have! It’s because this graphic novel isn’t about fame. No astronaut you'll ever meet took the...

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    2018 Nov 14

    Origins of the Green Revolution: Hybrid Seeds, Hunger, and Mexico-India Cooperation

    6:00pm

    Location: 

    Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA

    Gabriela Soto Laveaga, Professor of the History of Science, Harvard University

    As a devastating famine gripped India and Pakistan in 1966, a cargo of hybrid wheat seeds from Mexico arrived one fateful day on India’s coast. The seeds were first planted across the Punjab region using new...

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