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Local author Annette Januzzi Wick discusses backstory in writing and in our everyday lives, examining various memoirs, whether on food or the outdoors, to discover what past circumstances can reveal.

Registration Required.

Annette Januzzi Wick is a writer, teacher, speaker, and author of two memoirs on love and loss. She writes about the arts, women’s issues, cities, aging and memory. Her work can be found in Cincinnati Magazine, 3rd Act Magazine, nextavenue.com, Promedica, Belt Magazine, Edible Ohio Valley, and Ovunque Siamo, an Italian American journal.

 

Photographer Damon Wilson leads a tour through downtown Cincinnati to visit Washington Park. There, guests will photograph some of the oldest trees in the city and look to the native plants in season for inspiration with camerawork guidance from Wilson. Amateurs are welcome, as are film and digital aficionados alike. Be sure to bring your walking shoes!

Registration Required.   

Damon Wilson is a fine art, editorial, and portrait photographer who is the proprietor of Meta 19: Photographer LLC and a designer at KZF Design. He has had the pleasure of leading projects around the world, including Ascension Island, with solo shows from Arizona to Kentucky. While his work has found its way into several publications, he is most proud of his work with local publishers for the arts and cultural magazine Polly.

 

 

Art historian Lauren Cannady shares her research on the creation and circulation of botanical knowledge in early modern European gardens. While a 2024 Curtis Gates Lloyd Fellow, she came across a manuscript in the collection that appears to be notes made on-site at the Jardin du Roi in Paris in the summer of 1708 by a student attending Joseph Pitton de Tournefort’s botanical lectures. From an analysis of the Lloyd manuscript, the discussion then turns to early modern empirical practices, botanical scholarship, and knowledge networks.

Registrations Required.

Lauren R. Cannady, Assistant Professor of Humanities at the University of Houston-Clear Lake, is a scholar working at the intersections of art history, intellectual history, and the environmental humanities. She holds a PhD in Art History from New York University. Through her research and teaching, she explores artistic production and taxonomies of knowledge within interrelated histories of science, religion, technology, and labor in the early modern period. She is completing a book on early modern patterned gardens as sites of knowledge production and transmission, and is co-editor of Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transnational Networks, which appeared in the Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series in 2021.

Want to learn more about Pick Your Poison? Visit the Lloyd on July 20, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. and join Lloyd curators for tours highlighting the exhibition’s books and their significance.

Join leading cancer researcher Susan Mooberry as she discusses the quest for discovering new treatments for breast cancer. Many drugs used for the treatment of cancer are derived from or modeled after compounds found in nature. Natural products continue to provide effective new leads for many types of cancer including breast cancer.  The program will focus on therapies for the treatment of challenging cancers, including triple negative breast cancers. 

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As Professor Emeritus of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Dr. Mooberry previously held the position of The Greehey Distinguished Chair in Molecular Therapeutics. She has published over 145 peer reviewed articles, reviews and book chapters and holds eleven patents on new classes of drug leads.  Dr. Mooberry has served on scientific review panels for national and international organizations and as Principal Investigator of NIH and industry grants. She is past president of the American Society for Pharmacognosy and was elected as a Fellow of that society in 2019 and in 2022 was honored by the American Society of Pharmacology as the first recipient of the Susan Band Horwitz lecture. 

Plants are brilliant chemists that produce everything from colors, flavors, and medicines. They can also create deadly toxins! Have you ever wondered why they produce such a dizzying array of compounds, and why they work on us like they do? Find out more when Dr. Eric Tepe explains about the hows and whys of plant toxins found in everything from potatoes and castor beans to beautiful rhododendrons and how these plants protect themselves through such lethal ways.

Registration Required.

Dr. Eric Tepe is Associate Professor of Botany and curator of the Margaret H. Fulford Herbarium at the University of Cincinnati. His research focuses on plant systematics, including taxonomy, phylogenetics, biogeography, and diversification of “giant genera” – those with over 1,000 species such as Piper (Piperaceae) and Solanum (Solanaceae). He also studies evolution of ant-plant associations. He graduated from The Ohio State University with a double major in Botany and Spanish and went on to obtain his PhD in Botany at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. A native to Ohio, Eric lived in Venezuela and Argentina as a child, and developed a passion for traveling. His research takes him frequently to Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, or Panama where he is always on the lookout not just for plants.  

Sometimes it takes a village to create a green space, make fresh produce available in a food desert, and provide educational opportunities.   In just a few years, the Betts Longworth Historic District Group with support from the Development Fund West End and army of volunteers have beautified a community-owned parking lot and transformed its borders into a foraging garden where neighbors can help themselves to strawberries, carrots, tomatoes and a host of other fruits and vegetables. 

Meanwhile, across the street, students at Hays-Porter School are building on their science curriculum and learning how to reap what they sow, make a difference, and help their community.  With an emphasis on environmentally friendly equipment and hydroponics, they are using technology to garden sustainably. Join members of the Betts Longworth Historic District Group for a tour of the Betts Longworth Historic Group Garden and Hays Porter School Garden and learn more about urban gardening and these exciting and inspiring projects.

Beautiful but poisonous plants are often used as garden ornamentals, potted plants, and even florist flowers, yet most people are unaware of the dangers posed by the toxins derived from them. In Murderous Plants, Barney Lipscomb takes you on an enchanting journey through the cultural, historical and mythological aspects of poisonous plants. Past and present uses of classical “herbs” in murders, suicides, executions, accidental poisonings, as well as agents of bioterrorism, will be discussed. Increase your knowledge of toxic plants, know what to do in case of suspected poisoning, and discover the most important factor in poisoning prevention.

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Barney L Lipscomb is the director of the Botanic Research Institute of Texas Press and Library and is the Leonhardt Chair of Texas of Texas Botany. After earning degrees from Cameron University (B.S. Biology) and University of Arkansas, Fayetteville (M.S. Botany), Lipscomb was the herbarium botanist and curator for Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He became the assistant editor of the botanical journal Sida, Contributions to Botany and co-founded Sida, Botanical Miscellany. Lipscomb has co-authored numerous books on Texas flora. Interested in researching poisonous plants, he actively serves on the board of consultants for the North Texas Poison Center.

 

Native plants have always been part of the medicinal “tool kit,” used by Indigenous people, settlers, immigrants as well as doctors and researchers. Even today, upwards of 40% of the medicines we use are plant based. When high tech science collides with nature, the results are remarkable! Ongoing research peels away the layers of the anecdotal uses of our native plants and substantiates many as beneficial medicines. This presentation looks at the history of a sampling of Ohio’s Native Plants and their role in providing medicine then and now. 

Registration Required.

As a naturalist, speaker and writer Carol Mundy taught for the University of Cincinnati and Hamilton County Park District, leading classes on urban wildlife issues, native plants, weed identification and the historical uses of plants. She continues to offer lectures and workshops in her “retirement.” One of her favorite botanical projects was the design of the historical medicine display for The Ohio Governors’ Residence Heritage Garden & Lloyd Medicinal Garden. Carol is the recipient of the Citation for Horticulture Education from the Garden Club of Ohio and the long-time host of a weekly radio program “Outdoor Life” on WMKV radio in Cincinnati. The show features unique topics and interviews tying together nature, science, art and culture.

 

 

Plant names such as hemlock, wolf’s bane, and belladonna provoke a poetic menace that is well deserved. This summer, our poisonous plants exhibition, Pick Your Poison,  highlights the most notorious noxious plants and connects them with health effects ranging from the inconvenient to the downright deadly. Poisonous plants are indeed linked to allergies, addiction, cognitive impairment, seizures, and worse. But did you know that plant-derived poisons save many more lives than they take? Join us as we explore both the destructive and curative aspects of fatal flowers and venomous vegetables. By showcasing heart-stopping plant illustrations from as early as the 16^th century, we spotlight the contradictions and mysteries of poisonous plants, explore pharmacology’s debt to toxicology, and help you identify the potential dangers lurking in your backyard!

Free and open to the public. Light refreshments.