A first look at the New York Botanical Garden's floral tribute to Vincent Van Gogh

The New York Botanical Garden’s has transformed itself into a floral homage to Vincent Van Gogh.

The Bronx institution’s upcoming exhibit, “Van Gogh’s Flowers,” opens to members on Friday, May 23 and to the general public on Saturday, May 24.

“One of the reasons why we chose Van Gogh was because he was so drawn to the use of color, in his flowers in particular,” said Brian Sullivan, NYBG’s vice president of landscape and glasshouses.

The show seeks to create a living, interactive tribute to Van Gogh’s works and inspirations through large-scale, site-specific art as well as botanical displays that “tell what he was trying to do with his paintings through plants,” Sullivan said.

The exhibition recreates the Dutch painter’s works through a variety of installations in and around its Haupt Conservatory and the surrounding lawns. There’s an indoor reconstruction of the central courtyard garden of the hospital in Arles where Van Gogh spent the final year of his life, as well as a giant palette with petunias instead of paint.

It also features enormous, larger-than-life aluminum flower sculptures inspired by some of Van Gogh’s most famous paintings – “Irises on Yellow Columns” and “His Flowers in the Round.” The sculptures rise out of two separate reflecting pools, one indoor and one out, and are designed by Graphic Rewilding, a nature-focused arts duo.

“We felt like if we somehow used irises to recreate the New York skyline we could create something that felt like it not only competed with but also blended with the huge palms that were in here,” said artist Lee Baker, who is half of Graphic Rewilding.

Van Gogh may be well known for irises, but he is best known for sunflowers – a fact that posed an enormous inconvenience for the Garden, as the exhibit was set to open before the flower’s peak season.

“ The institutional calendar opens the exhibition in late May and we wanted to plant in late April, so the plants could be mature, but that doesn't work well for a sunflower,” Sullivan said.

Eventually, though, the Garden found a kind of sunflower that would bloom in time for the exhibit, allowing it to stay on schedule.

”We figured out a way to do it,” he said, gesturing to the field of both real and sculptural sunflowers beyond the conservatory. “And on May 20, we've got a beautiful field of sunflowers.”

Tickets to The New York Botanical Garden’s Van Gogh’s Flowers exhibit can be purchased online. It opens on Saturday and is on through Sunday, Oct. 26.