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Left: "An artist’s Delphiniums - a corner of the Museum of Modern Art at the time of Mr. Steichen’s "one-man" show last summer."
Monthly Bulletin of the HSNY, February 1937
The photographer loved delphiniums. In fact he bred and grew fifty to a hundred thousand of them every year on his farm in Ridgefield, Connecticut. In 1936 he celebrated the plant in a “one-man” show of live delphiniums at the Museum of Modern Art, the only time real flowers were exhibited there. The invitation to that show notes that “these delphiniums are a new American strain which, after twenty-six years of cross-breeding and selection by Mr. Edward Steichen, are being shown to the public for the first time.”
On January 14, 1937 he gave a lecture for the Society, “The Modern Delphinium: The Story of Its Evolution, An Analysis of the Various Strains Available Today and How to Grow Them” at the Park Central Hotel because the organization did not have its own hall. At the end of his talk, he exhorted his audience of 600: “That the Society has to go out and hire a hall in a hotel is a disgrace to the City of New York, and I hope that those of you who are not members will express themselves by joining this organization.”
The transcript of his program is part of the historical records collection maintained by the Library.
For more on Steichen see: