Hunt Institute Exhibition Brings Lost Work of Artist-Botanist to Light
What if a brilliant artist and scientist had lived longer? For Rafael Lucas Rodríguez Caballero, the question isn’t just what more he could have created, but how much of his work might have been shared sooner.
The Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation at Carnegie Mellon University is exploring that question in "The Art and Science of Rafael Lucas Rodríguez Caballero", on view from September 16 to December 17, 2025. The exhibition celebrates the Costa Rican polymath, whose career was cut short by Hodgkin lymphoma in 1981, when he was just 66.
The centerpiece of the exhibition draws from over 1,000 watercolor paintings of orchids, created over 24 years of travel through Costa Rica, Central America, and South America. Rodríguez painted these plants on site, often in remote areas, capturing them with both artistic beauty and scientific accuracy. Some depict orchid species that had not yet been formally described by scientists when he first found them.
During his lifetime, this major orchid collection was never fully published. That changed in 2018 — 37 years after his death — when “Orquídeas en Acuarela: La Obra Inédita de Rafael Lucas Rodríguez Caballero” was released by Editorial Tecnológica de Costa Rica.
“Rodríguez’s love for nature and the outdoors was so strong that I believe he couldn’t limit himself to either science or art alone,” said Hunt Institute Archivist Nancy Janda, who curated the exhibition with Art Curator Lydia Rosenberg. “His scientific mind and artistic abilities were of equal importance in his life’s work: to learn and to teach about the world around him. He embraced both disciplines, each to the benefit of the other.”
The works on display come from the Rafael Lucas Rodríguez Caballero papers, donated to the Hunt Institute Archives in 2019. In addition to botanical illustrations, visitors will find his precise, hand-lettered notebooks; jewelry designs crafted under French goldsmith Louis Ferón; and witty works like his 1952 satirical magazine “Bellea: The Journal to Devastate Botany.” His playful animal cartoons and creative scholarly articles, such as one comparing orchid types to medieval characters, reveal a scientist with a love for storytelling.
This is Rodríguez’s first return to the Hunt Institute since his work appeared in the 2nd International Exhibition of Botanical Art & Illustration in 1968. The Institute, located on the fifth floor of Carnegie Mellon’s Hunt Library, is considered the world’s leading archive for botanical art.
For Rodríguez, art and science were not separate worlds, they were two ways of exploring and sharing nature’s secrets. This exhibition offers a rare chance to see how precision and beauty can work together to reveal the wonders of the natural world.
“This show reveals the immense accomplishment of Rodriguez’s paintings of Costa Rican orchids”, said Janda. “It also shows off the fun he had; there is clear joy in approaching science through art. You could say his heart really was in the work.”
The show opens with a public reception on Tuesday, September 16, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., with remarks by the Hunt Institute archivist at 5:30 p.m. Admission is free, Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with limited closures in October and November. Visitors should call ahead to confirm hours.