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As Boston blooms and the city’s green spaces flood with walkers, sports leagues and bird-watchers, “Ming Fay: Edge of the Garden” at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum asks what is a garden? For Fay, that exploration led to lush, larger-than-life sculptures of plants, flowers and produce that create an otherworldly garden installation in the museum.
This exhibition is the largest showcase of Fay’s work to date, with more than 100 objects, and the first major exhibition of his work in Boston and New England.
“The story that I’m trying to tell here is Ming Fay saw gardens as sites for connection, memory and creativity,” said Gabrielle Niu, assistant curator of the collection and exhibitions at the Gardner Museum. “His gardens are sites for human needs and human desires.”
Ming Fay (American, 1943 – 2025), Cayenne Pepper, 1990s. Mixed Media. Private Collection
Many of these sculptures are crafted with paper pulp over a wire skeleton. Looking closely, particularly at the bell pepper and peach sculptures, viewers can see Fay’s skill as a painter in the perfect blush of fresh produce.
Two bird and flower paintings from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) anchor the exhibition in the Gardner collection. Typically tucked into the main galleries, these pieces are on display in the anteroom to “Ming Fay,” allowing for closer inspection in a new context.
The show also connects with the Monk’s Garden, one of the museum’s outdoor spaces that can be seen from the gallery. The winding path of the “Ming Fay” immersive garden leads right up to the window, visually connecting with the winding paths of the Monk’s Garden where visitors can scout actively growing plants and flowers. This area of the exhibition also has two scent boxes where guests can smell some of the herbs and plants Fay sculpted.
Ming Fay (American, 1943 – 2025), Ming Fay in Studio with Pear, 1990s. Photograph. Private Collection
Fay, who died in February, lived in New York City and his contemplation about gardens often took place within the context of an urban space. Some of the artworks, such as a large, sculpted maple twirler hung on a wall, are things Fay would see on the sidewalks. The large fruit and vegetable sculptures were inspired by vendors selling groceries in Chinatown. In other areas of the installation there are fantastical, imagined fruits and flowers that would be at home in science fiction.
Like the layers of paper Fay used to make the sculptures, the symbolism is multilayered as well. He fuses symbols and references from his Chinese American experience into the sculptures — for example with a large-scale ginseng root associated in Asia with medical benefits or an imagined pagoda plant that mimics the architecture of those tiered towers.
The exhibition is one of three exploring flowers in connection to Boston, urban spaces and Isabella Stewart Gardner. “Flowers for Isabella” in the Fenway Gallery showcases archival photographs of her gardens at her Brookline estate. She would often commission paintings of flowers (an unusual practice at the time) and bring them outdoors to admire in the garden.
Ming Fay (American, 1943 – 2025), Studio Photograph: Hybrids, Fruit, Seeds, 1990s. Photograph. Private Collection
On the exterior of the building, “Reigning Beauty,” a commissioned work by Gardner artist-in-residence Yu-Wen Wu, shows flowers falling from a partly cloudy sky onto a scholar’s rock. Almost all the flowers in the piece were photographed at the Gardner Museum.
“Ming Fay: Edge of the Garden” is on view at the Gardner Museum through September 21. The Gardner participates in Boston Family Days when Boston Public Schools students and two guests can receive free admission to nine cultural institutions around the city on the first two Sundays of every month.
Nature lovers can also view a companion exhibition, “Where We Meet: Imagining Gardens and Futures,” at the Pao Arts Center in Chinatown.
Niu hopes the exhibition encourages Bostonians to look around and examine their own natural spaces, their own gardens.
“It elevates this ordinary sidewalk debris that we all walk by into elements that are worthy of being in a garden, but also elements worthy of being in an art gallery,” said Niu. “Ming really makes you marvel at the ordinary.”
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