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Tucked in the back gallery of the Syracuse University Art Museum stands a bronze sculpture of a young woman solemnly cradling a bushel of grapes over her shoulder. It’s titled “Sweet Grapes,” a creation by Harriet Whitney Frishmuth, a prominent American sculptor who broke her way into the male-dominated field of metalwork in the 1920s.

SU senior Sidney Hanson, who’s studying art history and studio arts, researched the sculpture’s influence as an assignment for her art history senior seminar class, discovering its reserved stance contrasted Frishmuth’s more exuberant works.

Hanson said her research was ideologically-based and considered how Frishmuth’s themes of youth, beauty and fertility, qualities often represented by the presence of fruits in classical artworks, become malleable in their usage.

“Young women, especially, are often compared to (grapes), for there’s an idea that there’s a perfect time of being right for both fruit and women, where there’s this time period where you’re most desirable,” Hanson said.

Frishmuth’s “Sweet Grapes” stands as the focal point of “The Earth Laughs in Flowers,” an SU Art Museum exhibit. The display, inspired by a line of the same name from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1846 poem “Hamatreya,” examines images of plants and related objects.

Romita Ray, associate professor and director of undergraduate studies in art history at SU, guided art history majors enrolled in her annual senior seminar, along with Melissa Yuen, Ph.D and Kate Holohan, Ph.D, to curate the exhibit from pieces among the SU Art Museum’s collections. The exhibit opened Jan. 21 and will run until May 10.

In planning the course’s curriculum, Ray began by reading “Hamatreya” numerous times to understand the essence of its message, each time approaching the text from different angles like language and timeliness. When the semester started, Hanson and her classmates were then oriented to consider the ways in which plants are ignored in the world.

Hanson recalls hearing “plant blindness” often arise in conversations regarding the natural world. Hanson said Ray’s frequent use of the term allowed Hanson to better understand the detrimental human habit of overlooking the world’s natural elements through deeming plants as unworthy of care and maintenance.

“The Earth Laughs in Flowers” is meant to pull viewers back to a space where they remember who they are, Ray said. As we look forward to spring, she said, we anticipate the first flush of flowers. Similarly, the exhibition is a reminder that we may also look forward to our own bodies, minds and spirits becoming restored with the new season.

The senior seminar is a rotating class between art history faculty members to bridge the gap between undergraduate and graduate students. Each student chooses a work of art from a hat, then takes a deep dive into it. Ray said this is intentional so students can practice writing engaging, succinct labels for their pieces, requiring students to write with different audiences in mind.

While students follow the works of art, they simultaneously follow their own questions, Ray said. Professors also draw in their research interests so students can gain insight into and practice handling critical research questions.

Solange Jain | Photo Editor

Melissa Yuen, Ph.D, Kate Holohan, Ph.D. and art history seniors at Syracuse University curated the exhibit. Each piece was meticulously placed, ensuring each object was placed neatly beside one another in relation to wall availability.

Ray’s line of work revolves around tea, a topic where plant histories and scientists become enmeshed, she said. Outside of the SU community, Ray serves on the advisory council of Dumbarton Oaks’ Plant Humanities Initiative in Washington, D.C. She said it’s through these kinds of projects that plant humanities, as a discipline, can evolve across the globe.

Extraordinary scientists who roam the halls of both the SU and SUNY ESF campuses, like Robin Kimmerer, have increasingly informed Ray’s thinking. From the Adirondacks to Syracuse’s parks services, there are spaces to rediscover plants in ways we forget, she said.

One painting by artist Conrad Kiesel, which hangs on the wall behind “Sweet Grapes,” is of a woman holding roses, something Ray said is evocative of Thornden Park’s Mills Rose Garden near SU’s campus. She said the rose garden and its volunteers are wonderful, yet oftentimes overlooked. Displaying German’s piece is Ray’s way of paying tribute.

“That’s why that painting has as much space as it does,” Ray said. “Keeping in mind this idea of paying attention to our sense of place on campus and in the city of Syracuse.”

Conversations behind the exhibit happened not only among students but also with scientists. The class collaborated with Katie Becklin, whose lab works with prehistoric plant fossils, to practice peeling fossils. Ray said their engagement with this other dimension in the world of plants is what she and her students hoped to represent in the exhibit.

“Here you’ve got a hub of humanities sitting within a sea of science,” Ray said. “It’s a reminder that our disciplines of sciences, arts, and humanities are not separate. They must speak to each other, and they do speak to each other.”

Learning is constant in exhibit curation. Ray said each piece from the SU Art Museum’s collection was chosen based on its ability to spark excitement about the diversity of Syracuse. The art ranges from Black landscape painters to prints from the 18th century. Curating, Ray said, is an exercise that exposes those fascinated by it to both global and local cultures.

Ray invited curators Holohan and Yuen to work closely with the class in choosing pieces to investigate and write labels for. Ray said the scope of the exhibition has expanded to a partnership beyond students to those closely involved with many of the pieces already.

Holohan, SU Art Museum’s curator of education, said the museum considered various issues in deciding which pieces to display. Spacing was one of the most important decisions to ensure each object was placed neatly and strategically beside one another in relation to wall availability.

A sweetgrass basket woven by a Haudenosaunee artist is also featured in the exhibit. Sweetgrass, which Ray said is essential to Indigenous folklore and sacred ideas about connectivity to Earth, is disappearing due to development.

Folklore is not something that’s made up, Ray said. It comes from an understanding of plants in their full potential. Folklore is the heart of what it means to be human, Ray said, and is not disconnected from what scientists and artists are also doing.

Hanson said the “The Earth Laughs in Flowers” pulls viewers’ focus to recognize all of the world’s living beings. From cotton in canvases to plant-based pigments in paints, she said people may forget how much plants are intertwined in life.

“Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem is such a powerful reminder that we are connected to the earth, which is a living entity,” Ray said. “We are part of it, we are not separate from it.”

Published on March 4, 2025 at 11:29 pm

Contact Savannah: sfstewar@syr.edu