Speaking of Plants: Knowing and Naming
Location: North Hall Gallery
On Display: August 14, 2026 - Ongoing
Lead Curators: Jaime Frye, Associate Curator of Living Collections at Newfields, and Ryan Conway (citizen, Shawnee Tribe), Research Associate at the IU Institute for Indigenous Knowledge
About the Exhibition
The way people name and categorize plants is influenced by scientific understanding, cultural identity, and historical narratives. Various methods of naming and classifying plants from international standards to Indigenous cultural knowledge are examined within contemporary cultural context. Remarkable corn specimens from the Indiana University Herbarium and scientific plant vouchers illustrate the human quest to understand and relate with plant life around us.
Meet the Co-Curators
IUMAA would like to thank co-curators Jaime Frye and Ryan Conway for their contribution, without which this exhibit would not be possible.
Jaime Frye, Associate Curator of Living Collections at Newfields, examines how plant names collide at the intersection of science, cultural values, and everyday use. These tensions surface when contemporary perspectives challenge the scientific commitment to stability or familiar common names. They also show how botanical language endures, adapts, and reflects the societies that sustain it.
Ryan Conway (citizen, Shawnee Tribe), Research Associate at the IU Institute for Indigenous Knowledge, offers a Native perspective on human relationships with plants, specifically introducing how tribes of the Algonquian language family understand plant life as possessing inherent personhood, or animacy, as humans do. Plants are not given names by people but, instead, reveal who they are to those who are patient enough to relate to them as kin.
Speaking of Plants: Knowing and Naming Library Research Guide
IU Libraries has graciously compiled a research guide for the Museum and its guests to accompany Speaking of Plants. Use this resource to access curated books and articles relevant to the exhibition, including scholarly sources about Indigenous ways of knowing, humanity's relationship with plants, and the history of botany research in Indiana.
"Speaking of Plants: Knowing and Naming" Library Research Guide