MUSEUM OF HISTORY & ART

View photographs and hear the compelling story of one scholar and historian who sought to find the hundreds of plants that John Muir collected during his travels in Canada, Indiana, the southern United States, California and Alaska more than 125 years ago.

The traveling exhibition, Nature’s Beloved Son: Rediscovering John Muir’s Botanical Legacy, will be on display from Thursday, Dec. 5 through Sunday, Jan. 12 at the Museum of History and Art, Ontario. The museum is at 225 S. Euclid Ave.

The exhibition chronicles the story of Muir scholar and historian Bonnie Gisel, who in the fall of 2003 began a search for the plant specimens he collected during his travels. She wanted to know more about the landscapes that Muir traveled across so long ago, and what plants he saw.

She studied Muir’s drawings, letters, journals, articles and books that recorded his extensive travels, which were mostly done on foot, and she created a list of the plants he noted, saw and collected. Subsequently, she traveled to national parks, botanical gardens, natural history museums and universities, utilizing the lists to find hundreds of plants collected by Muir that were tucked away in herbaria, the dried collections of plant specimens that have been preserved for scientific and historic study.

Landscape photographer Stephen Joseph took on the arduous and challenging task of scanning hundreds of Muir’s plant specimens into a computer, and then digitally restoring them to their original beauty as Muir himself would have seen them. The complex process involved consideration of the fragile nature of the specimens, from three to 20 hours spent digitally removing a fragile plant from taped or glued mountings, and applying a variety of techniques to enhance the images. Finally, each plant was evaluated to determine its importance in terms of history, geography, plant taxonomy, date and beauty.

In 2008, Heyday Books published the book that resulted from the unique collaboration. “Nature’s Beloved Son: Rediscovering John Muir’s Botanical Legacy” features Joseph’s stunning plant images and Gisel’s compelling presentation of the life and words of the man forever smitten with “nature’s irresistible, divine beauty.”

Now this knowledge, talent and enthusiasm have been poured into the touring exhibition of the same name.

Admission is free. For more information, call 909-395-2510.