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Source: https://www.brown.edu/news/2026-03-09/memorial-flowers Parent: https://www.brown.edu/news
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March 9, 2026 2026-03-09
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Corrie Pikul\ [email protected]\ 401-863-1862
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Flower preservation effort at Brown focuses on finding new life for Dec. 13 memorial flowers
Samples of the flowers community members have placed at memorials to the victims of the mass shooting on campus are being held in trust at the Brown University Herbarium.
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Flowers from the memorial bouquets are being held in trust at the Brown University Herbarium. Photos by Nick Dentamaro.
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After the Dec. 13 tragedy at Brown, people started leaving flowers and other memorial items at various locations on campus, including the Van Wickle Gates.
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Memorial bouquets were also left near the Barus & Holley building where the devastating shooting had taken place.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Immediately after tragedy struck Brown University on Dec. 13, 2025, community members started leaving flowers, candles, photos, notes and other items at Brown’s Van Wickle Gates and near the Barus & Holley building where the devastating shooting took place.
In the weeks that followed, the memorials expanded, taking root in the snow. And when students resumed classes after winter break in late January, many made a point of adding their own bouquets to the growing memorials in honor of undergraduates Ella Cook and MukhammadAziz Umurzokov, whose lives were lost.
A flower left at the Engineering Research Center.
Flowers are ephemeral by nature, but as part of anongoing effort to care for the memorials, University leaders are collecting and saving samples with the goal of preserving some in perpetuity. Many are being stored at theBrown University Herbarium, an on-campus natural history museum for preserved plants.
The effort is part of the Brown Ever True healing and recovery initiative, a campus-wide project focused on bringing together resources, programming and services focused on mental health, psychological wellness and ensuring a strong sense of community for faculty, staff and students in the aftermath of Dec. 13.
In the coming weeks, University leaders will share with the community a formal process to consider how best to memorialize the lives lost and impacted on Dec. 13 for generations to come, said Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion Matthew Guterl, who is coordinating the Brown Ever True operational team. As conversations move forward for engaging the community in planning for permanent memorialization, preserving flowers from the more fleeting memorials is a way to respectfully document a difficult moment in Brown’s history.
“This was an event that will change Brown in many ways, some of which we can't comprehend right now,” Guterl said. “Photographing these ephemeral acts of memorialization, collecting the flowers, documenting the entire process: this is all a part of the effort to help current and future generations make sense of the impacts this had on our community.”
The flower preservation project is one of what is likely to become multiple efforts across campus to add items to Brown’s historical record, in addition to the more formal and permanent memorialization effort yet to come. In developing Brown Ever True, leaders of the initiative’s operational team sought guidance from colleagues on other campuses that have experienced similar incidents of mass violence. Guterl said they were inspired by an effort at Michigan State University to archive memorial objects following a school shooting there in 2023.
Guterl connected with Rebecca Kartzinel, an assistant teaching professor of biology who directs the Brown University Herbarium and has deep experience with plant identification, preservation and archiving.
On the morning of Friday, Dec. 26, in frigid, 16-degree weather, the two met on a nearly empty campus. First at the Van Wickle Gates and then on Brook Street near Barus & Holley, they solemnly yet determinedly pried delicate stems from the snow. The act was both deeply emotional and technically challenging, as many of the plants had already frozen solid.
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Flowers from the memorials have been carefully pressed, dried and safely stored at the Brown University Herbarium.
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A selection of different flowers were chosen to represent the aesthetic beauty of the bouquets.
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A total of around 16 flowers were chosen from the two memorial locations.
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Preserving the flowers is a way to respectfully document a difficult moment in Brown’s history.
“Rebecca showed a seriousness of intention that I think our community would be glad to learn about,” Guterl said. “It was quite moving. I remember being very quiet, even perfectly still at times, moved as we were by the reverence of that time and place.”
Together, the pair was able to extract around 16 flowers, with several from each memorial location. They looked for flowers that would preserve effectively and represent the aesthetic beauty of the bouquets, Kartzinel said.
“I selected flowers that would press well and seemed likely to keep their integrity as they thawed, which included chrysanthemums, peonies, baby’s breath, statice, lavender and more,” she said. “We took single stems from different bouquets to show the variety of flowers people had left.”
Kartzinel bundled the flowers against the cold and brought them to the herbarium, where she pressed, dried and safely stored the specimens. For each flower, she recorded which memorial it came from. The next step in the preservation process, Kartzinel said, will be to mount the specimens onto sheets of archival paper. Currently, the flowers are being held “in trust” for the Brown community, Guterl said, while decisions are made about whether some may be formally added to the herbarium collection as specimens and which may be preserved elsewhere.
“In addition to flower collection and preservation, this effort is meant to hold space and time as we consider how these memorials have helped us to begin the healing and recovery process, and how best to honor that.,” Guterl said.
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