It’s Sunday, don’t you feel like seeing some art, especially an exhibit with a sustainable twist? Pop over to the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, which is showing select works by two artist-botanists who captured plant life in all its stunning glory, Kate Furbish and Edwin Hale Lincoln. The exhibit is meant to highlight the growing interest in botany as the American industrial age was taking off.

Furbish was a Brunswick resident born in 1834. Never married, she began collecting and recording plant and flower specimens at midlife and trained herself in both botany and artistic renderings. In 1908 she made a gift of her life’s work, 1,326 paintings and sketches of the flora of Maine to Bowdoin College. They were recently collected in a two-volume set by a Bowdoin College graduate who runs a publishing house and remembered seeing the Furbish paintings at the library.

The museum has paired select Furbish works with photographs by Lincoln, a Massachusetts native who lived and worked at roughly the same time as Furbish. Lincoln’s platinum prints of iris and trillium are included in the exhibit, which will be up until February 10, 2019.

When you’re done botanizing, the museum also has an exhibit called “Among Women,” exploring the artistic portrayal of women in the United States over three centuries.

— MARY POLS

WHAT: Kate Furbish and Edwin Hale Lincoln: New England Botanical Studies

WHEN: Open today from 1 to 5 p.m., 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturdays with extended hours on Thursdays until 8:30 p.m.

WHERE: Shaw Ruddock Gallery inside the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Park Row, Brunswick

HOW: Free and open to the public. Visit bowdoin.edu/art-museum for more details.

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