Alice Riehl's Porcelain Florilegium

Fragile, luminous, and enduring, porcelain becomes a medium for rethinking plant life in the modern city in Alice Riehl's Porcelain Florilegium, an installation of the artist's large-scale porcelain wall murals inspired by botanical imagery drawn from medieval and Renaissance tapestries, French decorative arts, mythology, and sustained observation of plant life. The exhibition marks the first major U.S. museum presentation of Riehl's work and underscoring MAD's commitment to contemporary craft and material innovation. A Sèvres-trained porcelain artist, Riehl approaches flora not as ornament but as active subjects; foregrounding root systems, cycles of growth and decline, and the resilience of so-called pioneer plant species that flourish in inhospitable urban environments. In entering the artist's florilegium —a term historically used to describe a curated collection of botanical images or texts—visitors will encounter a formal gathering of porcelain wall murals shaped by close looking, material process, and botanical study.