Robin Vuchnich: In Search of Thoreau’s Flowers—The Memory of a Season

September 25, 2026–January 3, 2027

At the Frist Art Museum this fall, flowers become more than emblems of beauty. In Robin Vuchnich: In Search of Thoreau’s Flowers—The Memory of a Season, the Clarksville-based new-media artist transforms the gallery into a luminous meditation on environmental stewardship, biodiversity, and the fragile continuity between past and present. Organized by the Frist, the interactive, light-based exhibition will be on view in the Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery from September 25, 2026, through January 3, 2027.

Working through projection mapping, video art, and creative coding—without the use of artificial intelligence—Vuchnich gives scientific data a sensuous visual form. Her point of departure is Henry David Thoreau, the nineteenth-century naturalist and philosopher whose writings continue to shape American ideas about the moral and spiritual dimensions of the natural world. Thoreau’s Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854) remains a touchstone for thinking about solitude, attention, and life lived in close relation to place. Less familiar, but equally evocative, is his lifelong practice of collecting plant specimens around Walden Pond, many of which are now preserved at the Harvard University Herbaria.

For the first part of the installation, titled This is and No Mistake after a phrase from Walden, Vuchnich draws on that Harvard collection and on contemporary scientific research into species decline in Concord. The result is a large-scale visualization of ecological change rooted in Thoreau’s pressed plants. “If Thoreau walked those woods today, he would encounter a profoundly altered landscape,” writes Frist Art Museum Chief Curator Mark Scala. “Of Thoreau’s 648 plant specimens preserved at Harvard, over half are now extinct or endangered in the Concord region because of climate change, pollution, overdevelopment, and other human causes.”

That disappearance—at once scientific fact and cultural loss—has inspired a wider conversation among artists and researchers. Ecologist and entomologist Emily Meineke convened collaborators to consider how once-abundant flora might be remembered, visualized, and mourned. Alongside Vuchnich, the project has involved artist and professor of photography Leah Sobsey, film studies professor Marsha Gordon, and professor of organismic and evolutionary biology Charles Davis.

In The Memory of a Season, viewers enter a room where floral species in decline near Walden Pond bloom across three walls. The space is immersive: a field of color, movement, and ambient sound recorded at the site. Yet the work refuses passive looking. As visitors move through the gallery, a sensor registers their presence, and the projected flowers shift, distort, or disperse. When the movement stops, the field returns to fullness. The gesture is elegant and unsettling, asking viewers to consider how easily human activity can disturb an ecosystem—and how memory itself may become one of the last habitats for what has been lost.

The exhibition’s themes extend into Martin ArtQuest, the museum’s award-winning art-making space, where new interactive stations connect with Vuchnich’s installation as well as Shimmer: Dreaming the Posthuman, on view concurrently in the Frist’s Ingram Gallery. Together, the presentations invite audiences to think broadly about ecology, embodiment, technology, and the shifting definitions of the human in an age of environmental change.

Public Programs

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Following a visit to In Search of Thoreau’s Flowers—The Memory of a Season, audiences are invited to hear Vuchnich in conversation with Emily Meineke, assistant professor of urban landscape entomology at the University of California, Davis. Moderated by Mark Scala, the Frist’s chief curator, the discussion will illuminate the collaboration between artist and scientist and explore how art can make environmental change visible, intimate, and urgent.

Member Morning
Sunday, November 15, 11:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m.
Members only

Member Mornings give Frist Art Museum members a relaxed way to start the day with early access to the museum before it opens to the general public. Enjoy docent-led tours, explore the galleries and Martin ArtQuest in a quieter setting, and experience the exhibitions from a fresh perspective. Also, members are invited to gather in the lobby for light bites and conversation while reflecting on the museum’s newest exhibitions.

Organized by the Frist Art Museum
Supported in part by Jeannie and Clay Blevins and Gordon CAP Gallery Fund

The Frist Art Museum is supported in part by The Frist Foundation, Metro Arts, and the Tennessee Arts Commission, which receives funding in part from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, the Frist Art Museums, the Frist Art Museum is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit art exhibition center dedicated to presenting and originating high-quality exhibitions with related educational programs and community outreach activities. Located at 919 Broadway in downtown Nashville, the Frist Arts Museum presents visual art from local, regional, national and international sources in exhibitions that invite people to see their work in new ways. Information on accessibility can be found at FristArtMuseum.org/accessibility. Gallery admission is free for guests age 18 and younger and for members, and $20 for adults. For current hours and additional information, visit FristArtMuseum.org or call 615.244.3340.