Christina Pettersson adapted her artwork “The Forgotten Frontier” into custom cushions for the Conservatory space. Christina states that this work gave her the “opportunity to consider how profound the Caribbean culture, ecology and cuisine has permeated South Florida, so pervasive as to be invisible, or rather identified as our own. It is seeped into our landscape, from the coconut palms to the mango explosions that herald our hurricane summers. We owe a particular debt to the Bahamian pioneers, who with them brought their knowledge of how to survive the harsh conditions of tropical living- and the literal fruits of its labor. I am likewise indebted to the very first photographs of our South Florida landscape, and the pioneers and Seminoles within it, taken by Ralph Munroe, in the book Forgotten Frontier. It depicts a brief halcyon moment of relative peace between different people, before the railroad brought the outside world down upon it.”