Botanical Illustrations from the Adelia Gates Collection
Category: Preserve for the Future
Location: Smithsonian Institution Archives
Botanical illustrations from the Adelia Gates Collection
Adelia Sarah Gates was intrepid and stalwart in her pursuit of an educated, independent life. Despite many challenges and obstacles, this unusual woman managed to travel the world and met with extraordinary adventure. Gates pursued opportunities for scientific study and training in botany, and in so doing, made her name known. In turn, she was sought out by botanists Sarah Allen Plummer Lemmon and John Gill Lemmon and taught them to paint in a manner that rendered truer depiction of their specimens. Recent research has confirmed Gates's hand in our collection as well as her connection with other women's work recently added to the Smithsonian's collections. Future research will demonstrate her place in American women’s history, sharing the story of how she experimented and broadened her botanical art skills and supported herself and others, and how her collected works came to be exhibited at the U.S. National Museum, and later became part of the Libraries and Archives' collections.
Discover more about these illustrations in this collection.
The drawings are on fragile supports and the art media is itself delicate. Conservation technical research and analysis will accompany stabilization treatment, which will consist of media consolidation and mending of the paper supports as needed, as well as rehousing of the drawings. This will be followed by digitization, which will permit researchers to view the drawings and transcribe any important annotations without direct handling.
