Grapevine // May 2024
The Post Herbarium, Karine Hochar, Snoubar, french fries, and Omar Apollo
Grapevine is a monthly list of recommended things to read (books not links), think about, experience, or see (mostly in Lebanon) including art exhibits, films, performances, or anything that I found inspiring. Think of it as a curated moodboard of micro-utopias that is up-to-date and focuses more on the physical rather than the digital.
Returning to the Post Herbarium.
Over a decade ago, I had a part-time design job at AUB’s National History Museum which is housed within the university’s biology department. That department was the same place I had spent the previous three years and yet, I was oblivious to the treasures stashed in cabinets in the same halls I walked as a student. Ironically, I learned about the Post Herbarium as a designer-in-training with a bio degree from that very same department.
“The Herbarium contains more than 20,000 plant specimens belonging to 177 families and 955 genera of the flowering plants and ferns of Lebanon and adjacent regions. Each of the plant species described in the Flora of Syria, Palestine and Sinai, by Dr. George Post, is represented. The Flora was published in English by the American University of Beirut in 1883 and again in 1896. In 1932, a two-volume edition, revised and enlarged by John E. Dinsmore of the American Colony, Jerusalem, was published by the AUB Press. This handbook remains the standard reference work for the flora of Lebanon.”
I was still on my bougainvillea obsession so I went to go see if the herbarium had any information on their history in Lebanon. As we know, bougainvillea is not native here but it may have made its way over sometime between the 1930s and 1958 as it first appears as a specimen collected by Winnie Edgecomb but was not in the updated Dinsmore edition (from 1932) of Flora. Of course, it may have been in Lebanon before that time window but it just wasn’t logged.
While investigating that, I took the opportunity to look at their Vitis vinifera (Eurasian grapevine) specimens, collected in the mid 1800s.
“Comme Je L’imagine” by Karine Hochar.
Chaos Gallery - until June 4, 2024
Readers here may know of the Hochars behind Chateau Musar but what you may not know is that Serge Hochar’s daughter, Karine, is a skilled, self-taught sculptor. Surrounded by artsy family members, she previously worked at the family winery, then sculpted artistic pastries, and gradually moved to crafting more permanent works of art.
Her style is playfully bulbous with a cubist edge —a oxymoronic combination that I love. A collection of her bronzed curvy women is currently on display at Chaos Gallery in Tabaris/Sursock.