From Plant Press, Vol. 23, No. 3, July 2020.
Smithsonian botanical illustrator Alice Tangerini is the proud recipient of the Linnean Society’s 2020 Jill Smythies Award. The award is given to a botanical artist for outstanding, diagnostically relevant published illustrations. The award is given to an artist “in recognition of excellence in published illustrations in aid of plant identification, with the emphasis on botanical accuracy and the accurate portrayal of diagnostic characteristics.” The award was established in 1986 by the late Bertram 'Bill' Smythies in honor of his wife, the late Florence Mary ‘Jill’ Smythies, a botanical illustrator whose career as was cut short by an accident to her right hand. The Linnean Society is the world’s oldest active biological society.
Tangerini has been the botanical illustrator of the Department of Botany at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History since 1972. She has illustrated over 1,000 plant species. Her illustrations are created using pen and ink or brush with ink, and more recently digital painting. To date, Tangerini remains the only permanent staff botanical illustrator ever hired by the Smithsonian.
Tangerini will be presented with the award by the president of the Linnean Society at their anniversary meeting in its rooms at Burlington House in London where the Society resides. While the anniversary meeting is traditionally held on Linnaeus’s birthday on 24 May, the date has been rescheduled to early December 2020 because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Previous recipients of the Jill Smythies Award include Deborah Lambkin (2019), Niki Simpson and Juliet Williamson (2018), and Karin Douthit and David Williamson (2017).
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