Alice Tangerini

Alice Tangerini
Tangerini in 2017
Born	Alice Ruth Tangerini (1949-04-25) April 25, 1949 Takoma Park, Maryland, United States
Education	Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts (Bachelor of Fine Arts)
Occupations	Botanical illustrator curator
Years active	1972–present

Alice Ruth Tangerini (born April 25, 1949) is an American botanical illustrator and curator. Hired by American botanist Lyman Bradford Smith, she began her career as a freelance illustrator at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in 1968. She graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in 1972, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting and printmaking, and right after this, she started to work full-time for the NMNH as a staff illustrator. As of 2024, Tangerini remains the first and only botanical illustrator employed by the museum.

Tangerini's illustrations have been featured in academic journals, floras, books, monographs, and museum exhibits. She favors more traditional tools, like pen and ink, brush with ink, and graphite, although she does also incorporate more modern methods, such as digital painting. Aside from illustration, Tangerini has been teaching classes on the subject since 1976, and she has run and curated the Smithsonian Catalog of Botanical Illustrations and the Botanical Art Collection for the NMNH. She recovered from an injury she sustained in 2005, but it has since left her visually impaired in her right eye, brought about by diplopia.

Tangerini has received the Jill Smythies Award and has been recognized by the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators, the American Society of Botanical Artists, and the NMNH for her work. Her career has been praised in various publications, which have described her as one of the best botanical illustrators. American botanist Warren H. Wagner has considered her one of the leading figures in her field.

Alice Ruth Tangerini was born on April 25, 1949, in Takoma Park, Maryland.^[1][2] Art had interested her since the age of four, to the point that her neighborhood knew her as the "girl who liked to draw".^[3][4] Tangerini recalled that while in kindergarten, she had wanted to make her own pictures rather than coloring images from mimeographs.^[5] As a child, she had primarily drawn horses, dogs, and dinosaurs,^[4] and her artist's portfolio while in high school had consisted of drawings of horses and dogs.^[3] She said that her vision was her greatest asset while growing up, particularly how she could examine "something an inch from my face and see detail".^[6]

In 1968, while attending Montgomery College (MC), Tangerini was encouraged by a neighbor to apply to be a freelance botanical illustrator for Lyman Bradford Smith, the head of Smithsonian Institution's botany department.^[5][7] For their first meeting, Smith had asked for drawings of plants; the only examples of this in Tangerini's portfolio were grass underneath horses' hooves.^[3][5] The following week, he brought her to the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) and asked her to draw a botanical specimen;^[3][7] uncertain on what to do, she had drawn the dead plant as it looked, rather than how it would appear alive in its native habitat.^[3][4] Despite this, Smith hired Tangerini, and she worked for him during summers and on weekends.^[3][4]

Prior to working for Smith, Tangerini did not have a background in biology,^[4] and had only taken a botany night class at MC.^[5] Tangerini's position was similar to apprenticeship, and according to Smithsonian magazine's Leila McNeil, she was hired based on "a bit of luck (and a lot of skill)" and not through the "formal college route".^[3] Tangerini worked for Smith for three years, during which she developed as an illustrator and stopped relying on his sketches for her illustrations. She began to do her own plant dissections and to draw the specimens as oversized, in contrast to the to-scale examples provided for her.^[8]

Tangerini received an associate degree in art from MC in 1970,^[5] followed by a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting and printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts (VCUarts) in 1972.^[5][9] While in art school, she favored realism over abstraction.^[10] After graduating from VCUarts, Tangerini became a full-time employee for the Smithsonian's botany department, working as a staff illustrator;^[11][12] she worked under American botanist Warren H. Wagner.^[13]

Tangerini primarily does her illustrations in her office at the NMNH.^[5][13] Although she often uses pressed and dried herbarium specimens as her models, she does go on location to areas such as California, Hawaii, and Guyana to see the flora in their natural environment.^[12] These trips typically last a few weeks, during which she spends most of her time drawing in a lab, especially when focusing on the details of a plant. Tangerini went to Guyana in 1992 to illustrate its native plants, and since the government prohibited sample collection, she had to draw in a tropical plant farm for several days, with limited electricity. In 1990s and 2000s, she had traveled to Hawaii, and for one of these trips, she was assigned to draw a Zingiberales for botanist W. John Kress during heavy rain caused by El Niño.^[5]

Tangerini's illustrations have been featured in exhibits throughout her career,^[14] including as part of permanent collections for the Smithsonian Institution, the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation (HIBD), and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.^[12] Group and traveling exhibits have included her work,^[1][11] and she had her own solo exhibition at the NMNH in 1980 and the HIBD in 1980 and 1981 on her arecaceae drawings.^[1][15] Along with having her own drawings showcased, Tangerini curated an exhibit at the NMNH in 1990 about Mary Vaux Walcott's watercolor paintings of wildflowers;^[1] she also runs the Smithsonian Catalog of Botanical Illustrations,^[16] and manages and curates botanical art for the Botanical Art Collection for the NMNH.^[11]

In 1984, Tangerini was assigned by botanists Lyman Bradford Smith and Harold E. Robinson to illustrate a bromeliaceae;^[4] after noticing inconsistencies with the specimen's written description, she researched the plant and learned that it was a new species. Smith and Robinson had named the plant after Tangerini—Navia aliciae—based on her discovery.^[4][8]

The journal BioScience added Tangerini to its editorial board in 2023 to bring attention to the arts within Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM);^[17] the American Society of Botanical Artists (ASBA) had also included her as a board member.^[10][18] Along with this, Tangerini has authored three articles for the journals PhytoKeys and Harvard Papers in Botany and for the newsletter The Plant Press.^{[19][20][note 1]} She designed the masthead for the newsletter The Bean Bag, which was first published in 1975.^{[22][note 2]}

Aside from her work as an illustrator, Tangerini has taught classes on botanical and scientific illustrations since 1976. These courses are held at botanical institutions and gardens, as well as universities and fine art schools.^{[24][note 3]} She has also done lectures and demonstrations on illustration for artist groups and botanical societies and has created workshops on the subject.^[1][12] Her classes focus on drawing with pen and ink and do not involve digital tools; she explained that through this approach, she wants her students to "capture the personality and the feel of every organism as they draw by hand".^[4] Tangerini also helps with judging juried competitions at universities and botanical gardens.^[10]

As of 2024, Tangerini is the first and only botanical illustrator employed by the NMNH.^[5] According to Smithsonian magazine, museums and botanical gardens often have only one or two illustrators due to a lack of funding.^[3] Wagner has praised her as "irreplaceable" in her field and has referred to her as the best American botanical illustrator.^[3][13] She has repeatedly said that she is not planning on retiring,^[25] explaining that she enjoys her work and wants to grow further as an illustrator.^[5] Adrian Higgins for The Washington Post attributed this decision to a decline in the field of botanical illustration, as fewer floras are created due to the high cost and labor with illustration and more attention is going toward molecular phylogenetics. Higgins wrote that Tangerini continues to work as she is driven by the "prospect of being among the last of her kind".^[26]

Tangerini became visually impaired in her right eye after sustaining an unidentified injury in 2005. She was not given a clear diagnosis on the issue, but she attributed it to overwork, saying: "They don't have a diagnosis for it, they just say it's bad luck. You just worked so many years and one eye gave out." A surgery in 2005 resulted in Tangerini having diplopia in the affected eye. Wagner suggested that Tangerini wear an eyepatch so that she could continue her illustration work and offer his son's pirate patch as support. In addition to wearing an eye patch, Tangerini began using a graphics tablet and Adobe Photoshop and relied more on digital technology to give her a clearer view of images. She described her job as being more taxing after her injury, particularly when working ten hours a day, but said that "as long as I can still use my good eye, I will still be drawing here".^[13]

Tangerini has illustrated over 1,000 plant species,^[27] preferring more traditional tools such as pen and ink, brush with ink, and graphite.^[28] She enjoys collecting these materials from other illustrators, explaining: "I acquire their tools because to me it’s like a history. A little history of drawing that is slowly vanishing."^[3] Tangerini also uses digital painting,^[4][12] primarily doing her color illustrations on a computer.^[26] For her illustrations, Tangerini often idealizes their subject by focusing on their defining features,^[29] and her style is defined by her use of heavy line shading.^[3] She follows tradition in botanical illustration by focusing more on plant morphology and anatomy rather than color.^[3][29]

To prepare for an illustration, Tangerini spends roughly a week studying a plant;^[29] some of her research methods include rehydrating the plant, examining it under a microscope, and dissecting it and its seeds.^[13][29] At times, her resources are very limited, as in one instance in which she was provided with only a sprig with a few leaves and flowers as a basis for an entire illustration.^[5] Her work starts as a sketch, made with a camera lucida to magnify and trace the subject.^[29] After this sketch is reviewed by a botanist, Tangerini uses a metal quill pen, brushes, and ink to create a rendering on drafting paper.^[4][29] She often notices aspects of plant that botanists overlook, which she attributes to her having a different perspective as a botanical illustrator.^[30] Interns and volunteers assist Tangerini throughout her illustration process.^[5]

Tangerini's illustrations have appeared in academic journals, floras, books, monographs, and museum exhibits,^[3][11] and have been assembled into plates.^[31][32] Botanists, particularly taxonomists, are her primary audience;^[32] her work has also been used by botanists looking for a specific plant in the field.^[4] She differentiates her illustrations from fine art, specifying that her work is made for scientists and focuses more on clearly identifying a plant's genus and species.^[3][33] Tangerini says that her main goal for her illustrations is to preserve the specimens and to provide a record of them for the future.^[4]

Tangerini received the Distinguished Service Award from the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators in 1999, the Excellence in Scientific Botanical Art award from the ASBA in 2008, and the Jill Smythies Award from the Linnean Society of London in 2020.^[11][12] The Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney ranked her illustration of Piper sotobosquense as "Highly Commended" at the 16th annual Margaret Flockton Award Exhibition (2019).^[34] After working at the NMNH for fifty years, Tangerini was given a career award by the museum in 2023.^[35]

Several publications have named Tangerini one of the best botanic illustrators.^[36] Virginia Commonwealth University and Smithsonian Associates have named her a prominent figure in botanical illustration.^[9][37] Effie Kapsalis for the Smithsonian Institution Archives described her as a "groundbreaker" and featured her in a "Wonderful Women Wednesday" series.^[38] In Smithsonian magazine, Emma Saaty wrote that Tangerini has "inspired a whole new generation of artists to preserve what is rapidly becoming an endangered field".^[4]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Alice Tangerini.

• Alice Tangerini on the National Museum of Natural History website