Great news for DC-area residents and visitors who shop downtown: Smithsonian’s Natural History and American History museum stores carry products that reproduce art by Maria Sibylla Merian! And, excitingly—Art Herstory’s Merian note card wallet is among the goods Smithsonian now offers.
The Maria Sibylla Merian Note Card Wallet contains eight note cards (A2 format; four each of two designs) and eight antique gold envelopes. The two cards reproduce Merian works from US public collections. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds the watercolor drawing Study of Capers, Gorse, and a Beetle. And the Getty Museum owns The Rocu Tree, with Caterpillars, Moths, and Butterflies is a posthumous counterproof. The wallets are made in the USA and printed on sturdy 18-pt stock.
On the Smithsonian shops display floor, Art Herstory sits in exceptionally good company.
- The Maria Sibylla Merian Collection from ART IS reproduces elements of the artist’s Poppy Danish Flag and Campanula. (ART IS is a woman-owned creative and product development agency based in Brooklyn, NY.) The Merian merch includes an umbrella, a tote bag, a pen/stylus, a shopper tote, a canvas tote, a pillow cover, and more.
- Books on display include A Butterfly Journey: Maria Sibylla Merian: Artist and Scientist and Maria Sibylla Merian: New Book of Flowers. There is even a children’s book: Maria Sibylla Merian: Artist, Scientist, Adventurer.
Merian in 2025
It is heartening to see Maria Sibylla Merian’s art integrated into 21st-century culture in this way. And the artist is in for more attention in 2025. She features in two exhibitions that open this autumn:
- Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750, a major exhibition organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts; and
- A Feast of Fruit and Flowers: Women Still Life Painters of the Seventeenth Century and Beyond, opening in October at The Hyde Collection
Also, Merian is the subject of a new volume in the Illuminating Women Artists series, forthcoming this autumn. Maria Sibylla Merian, by Catherine Powell-Warren, focuses on Merian’s art, and on her art-historical significance.
Merian For Your Home
It is an honor for Art Herstory to have Smithsonian carry Merian note card wallets. Next time you are near the Mall, be sure to stop into the shop at Smithsonian’s Natural History and/or American History museum to purchase your favorite Merian stationery and home goods!
Related blog posts:
Maria Sibylla Merian is in Smithsonian Shops!
Art Herstory at the Detroit Institute of Arts Museum Shop
Woman Artist Themed Favorite Things, 2022 Edition
Art Herstory at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art Shop
