Botanical gardens and nature centers

Art museums and public galleries | Botanical gardens and nature centers | For development | For the store | Performing arts organizations

The four calendars
ByJesse Swingle September 23, 2026September 23, 2026

Fifteen cultural institutions whose public filings we examined close their fiscal years in five different months. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA and the Seattle Art Museum close theirs in June. Mount Vernon, Crystal Bridges and the Corning Museum of Glass close in December. Longwood Gardens and Desert Botanical Garden close in September, the Oregon…

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Botanical gardens and nature centers | For the store

The seasonal problem
ByJesse Swingle March 31, 2026September 22, 2026

A botanical garden in April is a different place than the same garden in October, and not just in the obvious sense that different things are blooming. The visitor’s emotional register changes. What they are looking for changes. The pace of a walk through a garden in spring, when everything is opening, carries a different…

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Botanical gardens and nature centers | For the store | History, science, and civic institutions

What you take home from a living thing
ByJesse Swingle October 14, 2025September 22, 2026

The Hillwood shop in Washington sits in a genuinely unusual position. On one side of it is one of the most significant collections of Russian imperial art outside of Moscow, Fabergé eggs and imperial porcelain and pieces acquired during the decade when Soviet authorities were selling off tsarist holdings. On the other side, through the…

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Botanical gardens and nature centers | For the store

Conservation and commerce
ByJesse Swingle June 10, 2025September 22, 2026

Most cultural institutions do not have an inherent philosophical tension with selling things. A symphony sells the experience of music; selling branded objects adjacent to that experience is an extension, not a contradiction. An art museum preserves and presents objects; selling objects related to those in the collection is continuous with the mission, at least…

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