The revival of the Botanical Garden’s living archive started in its own rooms, laboratories and library: several files, books, maps and testimonies from old employees helped to understand how the plant collection that is cultivated in the institution’s Arboretum evolved.
The old stills of the Garden are especially useful for the historical record. Its photographic archive, with over 3 thousand negatives from the first half of the 20th century, is priceless. The photographs record not only the evolution of the collections, but also the memory of the depicted researchers in action, usually in Brazilian or foreign expeditions.
The documents collected by the Living Collections Management Office and the Botanical Garden Museology Laboratory photographic archive are the basis for the “Planting History” exhibition. The show also received important support from from the Barbosa Rodrigues Library, which, with 66 thousand volumes collected since 1890, remains an invaluable piece of both historical and scientific value.
The exhibition presents key moments of the Garden’s history, especialy up to 1950, the period that is most richly represented in the archive’s photographs. The show restores the institution’s scientific memory and helps to understand its importance as a pioneering research center for Brazilian botaniy and as a landmark in the history of science in Brazil.