Admission: $5

Moderator: Anne Garner, Curator, The New York Academy of Medicine

Panelists: Dr. Ina Vandebroek, James Walsh, Mary Ting

New York, NY (LES): OffLINE at CENTRAL BOOKING hosts the first panel of the season in our Art & Science Discussion series on Friday, October 13 at 6pm. What is the cultural framework in which we understand medical botany? Two participating artists from the exhibition Plant Cure, along with an ethnobotanist who works with Latin and Caribbean communities in New York, share their understanding of medicinal plants in these contexts. 

Anne Garner is Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts in the Library at The New York Academy of Medicine. She has a background in Classics, and has worked with the Berg Collection of English and American Literature at the New York Public Library, as well as at the Ehrman Medical Library and the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.

Dr. Ina Vandebroek‘s research is at the intersection of floristics, ethnobotany and community health. She has fifteen years of experience in research and international cooperation projects in Bolivia, the Caribbean and New York City. Currently she conducts fieldwork in rural Jamaica. She studies plant diversity and the dynamics of medicinal plant knowledge and use for primary healthcare by local communities in remote rural areas, as well as by Caribbean immigrants in New York City.

James Walsh was born in Brooklyn, NY, studied literature at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Oxford University, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn. He has shown throughout the United States and Europe, and received a Fulbright Fellowship to Turkey. He is the author of numerous editioned and one-of-a-kind artists’ books as well as four books with small presses. His limited-edition artists’ book The Arctic Plants of New York City was published by Granary Books in 2016.

Mary Ting‘s artwork reflects on memory, loss, and nature. She grew up in a wonder cabinet household, climbing the shelves of pickled jars, and listening to stories of her grandma’s near death rescue by a poisonous centipede. Mary is a recipient of 2016 residencies at Joan Mitchell Center, New Orleans and LMCC In Process. Her ongoing project Compassion focuses on wildlife trafficking and the Chinese consumer. She teaches at John Jay College in the art department and the Sustainability and Environmental Justice Program. Mary is also an avid gardener and writer.