Jabobus Houbraken, Maria Sibylla Merian portrait in color, c. 1700, color engraving (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, CC 1.0) from the Maria Sibylla Merian experience in BLVRD Sketches app and Unknown English Artist, Queen Elizabeth I (Coronation Portrait), c. 1600. (Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London) from the Elizabeth I experience in the BLVRD Features app.
If one augmented reality experience is good, then two is even better, right? You know how Boulevard Arts recently released its latest BLVRD Features #AR episode about Queen Elizabeth I. Well, now we have another surprise in store for you, a brand new free app called BLVRD Sketches, which includes several art & culture installments previously available in the BLVRD Features app, along with an exciting new experience about another remarkable woman from the past, 18th-century scientist and illustrator Maria Sibylla Merian.
The new “Maria Sibylla Merian” episode provides an opportunity to explore the themes of history, art, and science through the story of a bad-ass trailblazing ecologist and entomologist whom you might - or might not - have studied in school, and who preceded experts like Charles Darwin and James Audobon by decades.
Users can bring one of Merian’s stunning prints of insects into their own space and examine it closely. Then they can open the print up to reveal several exciting related images, including an 17th-century global map, a contemporary early microscope, and also some of Merian’s scientifically accurate depictions of varied and exotic species from Surinam, like the Caiman Lizard and False Coral Snake. You don’t get to see those animals everyday!
Download the BLVRD Sketches app and learn more about Merian today! Or are you scared of a lizard?