Exhibits collection, 1954-2006.

This collection contains materials from a variety of exhibits created by the Arnold Arboretum over the decades, including Magical Floral Forms, Blossoms on the Bough, Sargentia, Flowering Trees, Flora from Shakespeare, Bridge of Trees, and Museum in the Garden. There are also materials from annual exhibits like Christmas wreath making and the Camellia exhibitions.

The Flowering Tree materials were collated by Arnold Arboretum staff sometime during the 1960s, though its original date of creation and intended purpose is unknown. It appears to have been created as an exhibit for the Arboretum or for a flower show.

The Flora from Shakespeare exhibit was put on by the Arboretum in the late 1970s. It was researched and organized notably by Ida Hay and volunteer Cora Warren. The images showed a selection of flora which were mentioned in some of Shakespeare’s plays and were exhibited next to the selection in which they were mentioned. The images were photographed from illustrations in the library collection.

The Bridge of Trees exhibit showed images taken by two Arboretum taxonomists on a Sino-American botanical expedition in 1980. This expedition followed the Arboretum tradition of close ties with East Asia and was an opportunity to explore more specimens similar to those of America’s Northeast region.

The Museum in the Garden exhibit was completed after the renovation of the Hunnewell Visitor Center. The exhibit shows Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow’s early work at the Arboretum and its relationship to his later buildings. It was curated by Professor Margaret Henderson Floyd of Tufts University.

Visiting Committee and Board member as well as longtime volunteer Corliss Knapp Engle worked with Mary Lou Amrhein, also an Arboretum volunteer, to create a twelve minute automated slide show entitled "An Introductory Tour of the Arnold Arboretum." While many of the slides were from the Arboretum’s collection of 6,000 35mm-color slides, Corliss Knapp Engle was responsible for a great number of the images used in the production. The slide collection had been labeled and organized by volunteers under Engle's management and leadership during the 1970s and 1980s and was transferred to the Living Collections Department in the 1990s.

This introductory tour, which begins at the Arboretum’s Hunnewell Visitor Center and ends at Peters Hill, gives a concise overview of the 265 acres of woody plants and what it means to become member of the “Friends of the Arnold Arboretum.”

This part of the collection is principally composed of images of plants in the Arboretum's living collection from the 1950s through the early 1990s. The original slide show, which was created in 1982, described the Arboretum’s origins and highlighted selected plants from with the living collections. It also documented the public's use and enjoyment of the landscape through all four seasons. A special slide projector that included an audio tape player enabled the show to be automated and made available to visitors in the exhibit hall on the first floor. The slide show was revised in 1983-84 and was transformed into a 12-minute videotape production in 1991. In September 1997 Harvard Video Services Center made the tapes in their current format. One DVD copy was created in May 2006 [now missing-July 7, 2011].