"Leafing Through History. The Roots of Plant Classication", a joint book exhibition by Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, the Smithsonian Institution's Dibner Library, and the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation (Carnegie Mellon University). Curators: Dan Nicolson, Charlotte Tancin, Alain Touwaide. The exhibition will display plant illustrations from ancient manuscripts and early printed books, as well as a large set of Linnaeus' original editions.

The exhibition is organized on the occasion of the symposium "Linnaean Taxonomy in the 21st Century", which will focus on the relevance of Linnaean binomials and hierarchical ranks in the light of recent advances in phylogenetic systematics. This is the first of a new symposium series - the Smithsonian Botanical Symposium - which will be organized each Spring by the Smithsonian Institution's Department of Botany, at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (10th and Constitution, NW). The goal of the symposium is to bring together the national and international plant systematics community to address a botanical topic of current significance. This inaugural symposium will be held on Friday 30 and Saturday 31 March, 2001.