Inge Meijer – the MoMA Plant Collection

The Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) archive serves as a widely studied reference for modern and contemporary art. In The MoMA Plant Collection, Inge Meijer focuses on the institution’s archive during the 1945–1983 as an investigative model, questioning the structural interplay of elitism and familiarity, art and ornamentation, culture and nature.

The MoMA Plant Collection is the artist’s second book that centres on plant life in museums – a natural progression from The Plant Collection (2019) which examines the presence of nature in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Focusing on our awareness and gratitude of nature – on a personal to macroeconomic scale – is at the heart of Inge Meijer’s practice. 

Plants are deeply ingrained in the collective human experience. They are not only the breath of all living beings, but sustain and reflect cultures worldwide.

Plants are deeply ingrained in the collective human experience. They are not only the breath of all living beings, but sustain and reflect cultures worldwide. From a superficial perspective, the tropical plants in the MoMA serve as background decor, providing a relaxing, modernist aesthetic. Inge Meijer instead emphasises the ‘exotic’ plants, shrubs and tree forms as embodiments of the hierarchical and structural issues within modern society.

Reading through the book, Inge Meijer redirects our attention from the pioneering modernist works of the 20th century to the tropical botanical life surrounding them. I quickly noticed myself much more intrigued by the interplay of shadows, illusion and mystique emanating from the archival images. The subtle redirection of our attention embodies Inge Meijer’s practice as an environmentalist; she pushes past the idea of plants as ideological window dressing, creating a conversation around their purpose, history and impact on physiological interaction.

Rather than serving as an organic framework for living, nature has become a marker of colonial power, a symbol of aristocratic wealth and status, a tool of economic capitalism, and a subject of the modern scientific paradigm.

Concluding the book, which totals 340 photographs and drawings that pay tribute to the pairing of plants with art, Inge Meijer speaks with Dutch artist and writer Maria Barnas to carefully address the imperial perspectives present in the Museum of Modern Art’s modernist exhibitions and their scholarly catalogues.

In her work, Inge Meijer references Penny Sparke’s book Nature Inside (2021) to explain how nature has been commodified. Rather than serving as an organic framework for living, nature has become a marker of colonial power, a symbol of aristocratic wealth and status, a tool of economic capitalism, and a subject of the modern scientific paradigm. These internalised nuances, along with countless others, are also embodied in the aesthetic strategy of European modernist architecture. Understanding these connotations, and the way they’ve been appropriated, it becomes difficult to once again recognise plants in museums as ‘neutral’ decor.

Making drawings of the plants, which was in part to reduce copyright costs, Inge Meijer further presents the plants as a symbol of regrowth, re-contextualising nature within museums to oppose the modernist paradigm. Focusing on the rhythm and form of plants, the artist often references the plants as sculptures, displaying them metaphorically as works of art.

The interplay of nature and culture forms an engaging and significant framework for discussion. Inge Meijer uses the book to simply invite contemplation, to consider the presence of nature within cultural spaces. Living in environments detached from nature, it’s easy to forget our intrinsic connection to plants. Yet once these botanical elements capture your attention, their significance is hard to ignore.


All Rights Reserved: Text © Luke Newbould
Images © Inge Meijer/Roma Publications