From soil degradation to waste disposal, the ecological concerns of the 21st century are becoming increasingly worrisome. Aiming to highlight these environmental risks and sustainability challenges, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum unveiled its new exhibition titled “Seeds: Containers of a World to Come,” featuring seeds and their ability to serve as symbols of the environment’s diverse and regenerative future. 

The exhibition was curated by Meredith Malone, an associate curator at Kemper and admirer of art’s ability to advance social issues. Through her role, Malone seeks to broaden the scope of the museum’s collection to address various societal issues — the environmental crisis being a pivotal one.

“Sometimes the environmental crisis can [be] so overwhelming and abstract, but through the visual arts, we can have a different entry point to understanding it,” Malone said. 

In order to convey environmental timeliness, Malone landed on seeds to be the focal point of the exhibition’s works, showcasing their everlasting importance to environmental prosperity. 

The exhibition features a large range of three-dimensional works from artists around the globe. The exhibition includes art inspired by representations of seeds themselves, mechanisms that house seeds and their growth, and cultural portrayals of seeds in an attempt to highlight varying geographical climates. Each of the pieces are subtly intertwined, an idea emphasized by environmentalist and artist Anne Percoco, whose seed library is featured as a work in the exhibition.

The exhibition allows visitors to actively engage with seeds through a seed library — drawers of seed packets from different weedy species in St. Louis, enclosed by a roof in the exit, created by Anne PERCOCO (ACC 2008) and Ellie IRONS (ACC 2017), a New York based environmentalist. The two have been working together for 10 years and collect weeds in various locations, moving the library with them.