New York Botanical Garden's newest exhibition Flower Power' fuses political history with psychedelic art Bronx Times

A new exhibit at the New York Botanical Garden presents Flower Power by combining 1960s anti-war and liberation movement aesthetics with contemporary art. The garden uses immersive installations, including a plant-filled, vinyl-wrapped Volkswagen bus playing 1960s music and a spray-painted school bus playing Gil Scott-Heron’s 1971 anthem. A 15-foot peace sign decorated with flora appears in a reflecting pool near the visitor’s center. Inside, artworks use materials like resin, stained wood, steel, and LED lights. The Mertz Library displays fashion, art, and era ephemera, including Warhol’s Flowers, Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, and a photo of Martin Luther King Jr. with a lei. The exhibit also traces the origins of “flower power” through activism and marches.

"One of the tenets suggests protestors face police with masses of flowers. While many credit this manifesto for coining the term flower power, the phrase doesn't appear in the text. The moniker wouldn't come into fruition until 1967 when the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam organized the Flower Power march at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C."

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