Break out the bellbottoms — this summer, the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) channels the spirit of the 60s with Flower Power, a multidisciplinary exhibition celebrating flowers as a cultural symbol of peace and love that advances closer relationships with the natural world. The gallery show and gardens combine a vibrant flower show and monumental installations with paintings, photography, and posters from the 1960s and 70s, including three works by pop art icon Andy Warhol.
“Flower Power unites world-class art with our living plant collections and our historic landmark buildings and landscape,” said Jennifer Bernstein, CEO and The William C. Steere Sr. President of the New York Botanical Garden. “It’s an opportunity for us to present a cultural experience that can only happen at a botanical garden of this scale and scope, where art, history, and the natural world coexist.”
Visitors can step back in time in the Art Gallery of NYBG’s Mertz Library Building with an extraordinary display of paintings, photographs, screenprints, and collages by artists from the 1960s and 70s that depict flowers as symbols of peace and love. Andy Warhol’s Flowers (1964) will be on view alongside the image used as source material for the work, a photograph taken by nature photographer and environmental activist Patricia Caulfield. Other highlights within the gallery include artworks by Joe Brainard, Milton Glaser, Carlos Irizarry, Corita Kent, and many others, as well as original fashion from the period, posters, and first editions of critical feminist and environmental texts, including Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Together with reproductions of photographs by Bernie Boston, Bob Edelman, and other photojournalists, archival audio, and news footage, these displays will exemplify the era’s social movements and culture. By placing these works in conversation with each other, Flower Power explores how flowers took on resonance as creative and enduring symbols in the social movements of the 1960s, including the early environmental movement, as well as art, music, and fashion to champion a closer relationship with the natural world.
On select evenings starting May 30, Flower Power comes alive with a mesmerizing liquid light show and unforgettable live music. Each night features a headlining band on stage whose work brings a fresh, modern edge to the iconic and free- spirited sound of the late 60s — including Ghost Funk Orchestra and Habibi — as colorful visuals by Liquid Light Lab transform the Mertz Library façade into a swirling, psychedelic canvas.
“We are proud to present an exhibition that celebrates how flowers have been used as enduring symbols of peace and creative possibility, from the transformative movements of the 1960s to today,” said Joanna L. Groarke, Vice President of Exhibitions and Programming at the New York Botanical Garden. “Flower Power reminds us that plants have always been a shared language, one that artists return to again and again to express hope, harmony, and connection.”
Flower Power runs from May 23 through October 18, 2026. See full details here.
Images courtesy of the New York Botanical Garden.
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