Flower Power

The Multidisciplinary Exhibition Celebrating Flowers as a Cultural Symbol, Opens MAY 23, 2026.

FLOWER POWER’S CONTINUED RELEVANCE

What more appropriate theme for the summer exhibition at NYBG could there be in our current times which are a throwback to the 1960s when the term “Flower Power” was coined by Allen Ginsberg. The hippies or “flower children” as they came to be known, protested to “make love, not war,” and demonstrated with flowers to replace weapons as they marched and sang, “all we are saying is give peace a chance.”

On college campuses throughout the nation the youth protested the Vietnam War. This gave rise to an explosion of cultural changes in the arts, social dynamic and environmental concerns. These revolutionized aspects of industry and perspectives, and also created a backlash of conservatism we are still experiencing today. The ideas from that time have remained continually relevant.

As a supreme irony, the theme is appropriate today, though that is the last thing that the NYBG team had in mind when they collaborated to come up with “Flower Power” over two years ago. When they arrived at this theme, little did they know that they were prescient, with a highly topical theme. There was a different administration in the White House and war was nowhere on the horizon, nor were the issues of the 1960s like equality, voting rights and equal opportunity an overarching concern. Never in the imagination of the NYBG team nor the 99% of our nation’s non-billionaires did we fathom that the “State of the Union” would be where it is today. The parallels are astounding.

FLOWER POWER AND WHAT IT REPRESENTS HAS BECOME A NECESSITY IN OUR LIVES AND FOR ALL TIME AS A VIBE FOR LIVING IN FREEDOM WITHOUT FINANCIAL OPPRESSION.

“Flower Power” conveys symbols of peace and love that advance closer relationships with the natural and human world. This is what NYBG’s mission is about.

How is this theme so timely? First, the country disagrees with the administration’s failed War in Iran which polls suggest is completely unpopular with the American people. Unlike the War in Viet Nam, the Iran War is a war which the administration started without congressional approval or justification. Furthermore, and worse, it was influenced by a leader who for forty years tried to get previous US leaders to attack Iran, to no avail. The current administration jumped to the influencer’s recommendation in error and without congressional consent.

GIVING PEACE, ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL WISDOM A CHANCE THEN AND NOW

So now, the American people once more rely on “Flower Power,” and the idea to “give peace a chance.” Also, in the 1960s was the push for equality and an end to discrimination in voting rights. There were famous marches and the youth marches against the Viet Nam War melded with marches against segregation and for equal rights. Flower Power and the association of peaceful marches trended then. Who could possibly think that similar marches and protests would happen today or that voting rights would ever become an issue today?

THEN AS NOW: MARCHES

Ironically, there have been millions marching to show their displeasure with the current administration’s policies on war, on tariffs, on thousands of job cuts by DOGE, and on the January 2025 raid and privacy theft at the Treasury Department. It was then that Americans’ SS data which is to say access to Americans’ financial data, tax data, medical records and all records and information related to SS numbers was illegally downloaded to servers held by DOGE youngsters unauthorized by Congress to hold such data.

THEN AS NOW: LEGAL VIOLATIONS

This privacy breach unauthorized by Congress compromised and still compromises immigrants (not yet citizens who pay taxes) and citizens’ privacy in violation of federal and state law. This lawbreaking by the administration has not yet been corrected or punished. In addition protests have been against out-of-control inflation rates, tearing down of the White House East Wing and much more which in effect has been a war against those American people who are not billionaires.

THEN AS NOW: CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUES

Worst of all there have been protests against the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act with the attempt to gerrymander the Black population out of their voting rights in southern Red States. This recalls the Civil Rights marches during the 1960s. Since the Roberts court allowed gerrymandering in the Red States to reconfigure voting maps, the Court’s failure to uphold the Constitution has been done as an attempt to disenfranchise Southern Black people to prevent a majority Democratic congress. which will impeach and humiliate the occupant of the WH a third time with the intent of trying and jailing him for high crimes and misdemeanors.

WE NEED FLOWER POWER NOW!

If ever there was a time that begs for Flower Power, “coming together” to “give peace a chance” it is today. Completely unintentional as a prescient, current theme, the Garden team anticipated that the theme “Flower Power” presents a vibe, a mood, a style we should be embracing. The timeless theme lands at the right time. “Giving peace a chance and making love, not war” is what the country wants. The exhibition invites visitors to “come together” and embrace flowers as meaningful symbols in our own lives. Joanna L. Groarke, Vice President of Exhibitions and Programming at NYBG says, Flower Power reminds us that plats have always been a shared language, one that artists return to again and again to express hope, harmony and connection.”

The Garden-wide takeover also includes a gallery presentation (NYBG Mertz Library building) which features a display of paintings, photographs, screenprints and collages by artists from the 1960s and ’70s that depict flowers as symbols of peace and love. Andy Warhol’s Flowers (1964) is on view alongside the image used as source material for the work, a photograph taken by nature photographer and environmental activist Patricia Caulfield.

The famous photograph of an activist reacting to a firing arm and other archival photographs, news footage, memorabilia, books, art and first editions of critical feminist and environmental texts (Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring are at the NYBG Mertz Library.

LIQUID LIGHT SHOWS ARE A MULTIMEDIA PERFORMANCE ART

On select evenings starting May 30, 2026 Flowr Power comes alive with an astonishing liquid light show and joyful live music. Each night features a headlining band on stage whose work brings a fresh, modern edge to the iconic and free-wheeling, spirited sound of the late ’60s. These include Ghost Funk Orchestra (May 30), Habibi (June 13), Evolfo (June 20) and Woods (June 27). Colorful visuals by LIQUID LIGHT LAB transform the Mertz Library facade into a mesmerizing psychedelic canvas.

FLOWER POWER RUNS THROUGH OCTOBER 18, 2026

For more information on GARDEN programing go to the NYBG site. https://www.nybg.org/event/flower-power/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23859997109