"Chosen as the ideal inaugural theme for our national museum’s 1995 Grand Opening, 'The Tree of Life' was inspired out of a fierce passion for that greatest artist, Nature, and conceived as a public celebration of trees, their universal symbology, and an exaltation of the many artistic, architectural, and practical, wonders that trees have enabled. The single-most common theme of environmental visionary artists worldwide is their recreation of the Garden of Eden, or some personalized kindred utopia, right in their own backyard." - Founder, Director and Chief Curator, Rebecca Hoffberger