This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
Take a break from the heat this summer to step into some cool galleries exhibiting scienceart. If the exhibits keep pouring in at this rate, I'll have to split up this post by region. There are five scienceart exhibits in New York alone! But for those of you who are not in the NY-region, don't lose heart, there are fifteen other exhibits around the country you might be able to catch, including one at Washington Dulles International Airport. Enjoy!
EXHIBITS: NORTHEAST REGION
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June - November, 2014
Gateway Gallery
Between Concourse C and the AeroTrain C-Gates station
Washington Dulles International Airport
Washington, D.C.
Life: Magnified is an exhibit of scientific images showing cells and other scenes of life magnified by as much as 50,000 times. High-resolution versions of all 46 images in the collection are also featured in an online exhibit with longer captions than in the airport exhibit.
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June 16 - August 22, 2014
AAAS Art Gallery
1200 New York Avenue NW
Washington, D.C.
Thought experiments consider the effects of a hypothesis or theory that cannot easily be tested in the physical world. German-born physicist Albert Einstein used the term gedankenexperiment to describe his use of conceptual rather than actual experiments to create the theories of special and general relativity. Famous examples of thought experiments include Schrödinger's cat, a Turing machine, Maxwell's demon, and the broken window fallacy.
Inspired by scientific and mathematical theories, hypotheses, and principles from Archimedes, the I Ching, geology, geometry, architecture, and more, the artists featured in GEDANKENEXPERIMENT have conducted their own thought experiments, resulting in the sculptural expressions—incorporating wood, metals, paper, computer parts, and limestone—featured in this show.
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INTERCONNECTED: Science, Nature, and Technologies
April 11 - August 31, 2014
Adamson Gallery
1515 Fourteenth Street NW, Suite 301
Washington, D.C.
It is certainly easy to view Yuriko Yamaguchi’s exquisite sculptural works, sometimes studded with tiny LED lights, as transcendental organic bodies: the curvature of the resin shapes and the networked wires cast ghostly shadows on the walls and the ceilings upon which they are mounted and suspended. They bring to mind, as the artist intends, a technological rendition of nature; an otherworldly environment. At the same time, they also reference another interplay of technology and nature: the information cloud; a deliberate move on Yamaguchi’s part: “Both are artificial products and both are able to multiply endlessly; once we are determined to destroy them, they can be corrupted instantly. In today’s civilized society, we no longer can live without technology and artificial materials. We co-exist with them although we are part of nature."
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June 30 - August 25, 2014
The Scotch Plains Public Library
1927 Bartle Avenue
Scotch Plains, NJ
Discover the elegance and beauty in Science. In keeping with this year’s summer reading theme, we proudly present Art in Science, on loan from Monmouth University. The exhibit intends to express and highlight the beauty of science- through images, drawings, and photos of natural forms and visualization of scientific, mathematic, and engineering processes based on the research and coursework of Monmouth University faculty, alumni, and students. These images reveal the elegance of science art in scientific results, observations, and in failures.
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April 19 - September 21, 2014
The New York Botanical Garden
2900 Southern Boulevard
Bronx, NY
In homage to the beauty of the botanical world's most bizarre flora, the Garden invited members of the American Society of Botanical Artists to participate in a study of the eccentric, creating works of art based on visually unusual plants chosen by the artists themselves. View the results of their efforts—46 captivating paintings and illustrations of exotic specimens—on display in the Ross Gallery.
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April 19, 2014 - January 4, 2015
New York State Museum
222 Madison Avenue
Albany, NY
Focus on Nature XIII features 91 natural and cultural history illustrations, representing the work of 71 illustrators from 15 different countries. The subjects represented are diverse, ranging from those only found in the artists’ home country to those that have a worldwide distribution; A special feature of FON XIII is a 3D illustration by Swiss artist Livia Maria Enderli of Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis). This reconstruction of a skull from an archaeological site in Uzbekistan in central Asia found in 1938 uses the latest technology available to artists and scientists.
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OUT OF HAND: Materializing the Postdigital
October 16, 2013 - July 6, 2014
Museum of Arts and Design
2 Columbus Circle
New York, NY
Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital will explore the many areas of 21st-century creativity made possible by advanced methods of computer-assisted production known as digital fabrication. In today’s postdigital world, artists are using these means to achieve levels of expression never before possible – an explosive, unprecedented scope of artistic expression that extends from sculptural fantasy to functional beauty. Out of Hand will be the first major museum exhibition to examine this interdisciplinary trend through the pioneering works of more than 80 international artists, architects, and designers.
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NATURAL HISTORIES: 400 Years of Scientific Illustration from the Museum’s Library
October 19, 2013 - October 12, 2014
American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West at 79th Street
New York, NY
Featuring scientific illustrations spanning five centuries, the new exhibition Natural Histories: 400 Years of Scientific Illustration from the Museum’s Library explores the integral role illustration has played in scientific discovery through 50 striking, large-format reproductions from seminal holdings in the Museum Library’s Rare Book collection. Artists include Albrecht Dürer, Joseph Wolf, Moses Harris, John Woodhouse Audubon, and Maria Sibylla Merian.
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THE SIX-SIDED FORCE: Louise Despont
June 15 - July 29, 2014
Pioneer Works, Center for Art and Innovation
159 Pioneer Street
Brooklyn, NY
Louise Despont explores drawing as abstract meditations, employing and recasting a vocabulary of elements found within a set of architectural stencils and compasses, onto the pages of antique ledger books. For this exhibition, Despont has borrowed the geometries of beehives, gardens, and found architecture to offer balanced forms that engage past and present as indicators and provocations. In view of colony collapse, and other environmental concerns, the Six Sided Force investigates the subtle architectures, seen and unseen, between nature and human influence.
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WATER STORIES: Conversations in Paint and Sound
July 11 - December, 2014
Museum of Science
1 Science Park
Boston, MA
Water — our most precious resource. Easy to take for granted, but without it, there can be no life. Industrial practices, human behaviors, and climate change have caused us to face unquestionable challenges regarding the future of our water supply. Through paint and sound, artist Anne Neely, in collaboration with sound artist Halsey Burgund, focuses our attention on alarming stories unfolding today. Neely invites inquiry into water's unifying role in our world and the many ways humans affect it.
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November 21, 2013 - November 30, 2014
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Museum
Building N51
265 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA
Melding art, science, history and technology, 5000 Moving Parts features sculptures by Anne Lilly, John Douglas Powers, Takis, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Arthur Ganson in collaboration with sound artist Christina Campanella.
The exhibition looks at the wide range of kinetic art being made now: from work that's concerned entirely with motion and unpredictability, to sculptures that engage with contemporary political topics, to work that brings ancient myth into contemporary life.
EXHIBITS: SOUTH
LIFECYCLES: John Self & Matt Norris
June 28 – July 26, 2014
Art.Science.Gallery
916 Springdale Road
Building 2 #102
Austin, TX
The precise mechanics of Matt Norris and imaginative compositions of John Self combine in Lifecycles to create an ecosystem of interacting assemblage creatures. Both artists give new life to discarded objects — Norris with bicycle chain, nails and sheet metals; Self with “authentic garage sale artifacts”. Their art ties together the lifecycles of organisms with those of consumer products in this dual exhibition of sculptural work.
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BLACK & LIGHT: Abrasion Holography by James Minden
through September 7, 2014
Museum of Arts and Sciences
4182 Forsyth Road
Macon, GA
Black & Light features groundbreaking abrasion holograms by artist James Minden that employ the same physics as white-light or “rainbow” holograms. As a viewer moves around each piece of art, the item changes its appearance. Minden refers to his work as light drawings because the surface is literally drawn or incised by hand. Using a compass, the artist scratches narrow radius-shaped grooves in a sheet of plastic that has been coated with a diluted matte medium. When light is reflected from the surface and grooves, the image appears to be three-dimensional. The exhibition that gives each viewer a unique experience because no two people see the same thing at the same time.
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Following in the Bartrams’ Footsteps
August 30 - November 2, 2014
North Carolina Botanical Garden
100 Old Mason Farm Road
Chapel Hill, NC
This major art exhibition includes forty-four original artworks based on the native plant discoveries made by John and William Bartram in their renowned and influential travels throughout the eastern wilderness between the 1730s and 1790s.
EXHIBITS: MIDWEST
June 6 – July 12, 2014
Packer Schopf Gallery
942 W. Lake Street
Chicago, IL
Nature² features work by sculptor Victoria Fuller. While her prior sculpture re-appropriated common, manufactured objects to subtly reveal environmental motifs, the Nature² collection interprets the natural world via more literal construction. Direct depictions of organic elements - whether among earth and grass or human-implemented industrial piping - allow Fuller to investigate systems impacted by man's activity in a widely-understandable manner. Though distinct, Fuller's newer sculpture remains interconnected with her found object-based artwork. Each body of work informs the other, fully illuminating the universal experience of life on earth.
Object Permanence features work by Michael Dinges. Dinges works primarily in the tradition of the 19th century sailor's art of scrimshaw and the soldier's folk art style of trench art in order to explore the legacy of the industrial revolution and its effects on society. "Object permanence" is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be observed. In our increasingly digitized culture, established behaviors and societal norms are under constant assault by accelerating technological development. Is the pace of this development outstripping our ability to soberly cope with the changes that confront us?
EXHIBITS: WEST
FOLDING PAPER: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami
May 16 - September 21, 2014
Bellevue Arts Museum
510 Bellevue Way NE
Bellevue, WA
This unique exhibition explores the history and evolution of paper folding. Over 140 works by 45 master folders from around the world—from countries as diverse as Japan, the United States, Uruguay, and Russia—showcase the power of origami and its modern-day application in the field of engineering, design, fashion, and the global peace movement. Works range from lifelike and representational to mathematical and computer-generated, lyrical and abstract to social and political. Considered a children's craft for many centuries, Folding Paper pays tribute to the many artists and activists who have elevated origami to a recognized art form as sophisticated and meaningful as any other.
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through July 2014
Pacific Science Center
200 Second Ave. N.
Seattle, WA
Joseph Rossano's interactive BOLD sculpture series interprets the work of innovative biodiversity scientists including Dr. Daniel H. Janzen, distinguished Kyoto Prize Laureate, Crafoord Prize recipient, BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge awardee, and University of Pennsylvania Professor.
Rossano engages the public in DNA barcoding of biodiversity by giving viewers access to efforts to catalog, understand, and protect our planet's precious and threatened biological resources. Sculptured and silvered polyurethane butterflies and Moorea reef fish, and lacquered sea life abstractions are the core of Rossano's exhibition.
BOLD shares the acronym of Barcode of Life Datasystems, the Canadian repository for the International Barcode of Life project, for which Janzen is a passionate proponent and contributor.
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2014 Guild of Natural Science Illustrators Annual Members Exhibit
April 30 - September 25, 2014
University of Colorado Museum of Natural History
Henderson Building
15th and Broadway
Boulder, CO
The University of Colorado Museum of Natural History is proud to present the 2014 Guild of Natural Science Illustrators 2014 Annual Members Exhibit. This juried exhibition represents the finest in contemporary scientific illustration by members of the GNSI, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the practice of scientific illustration.
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INSIDE RODIN'S HANDS: Art, Technology, and Surgery
April 9 - August 3, 2014
Cantor Arts Center
Museum Way and Lomita Drive
Stanford University
Stanford, CA
James Chang fell in love with the Rodin Sculpture Garden at Stanford when he was an undergraduate. Later, while training in plastic and reconstructive surgery at the Stanford University School of Medicine, he visited the Cantor Arts Center with his family on Thursday evenings, where they would enjoy dinner in the café and then the art. His fascination for the work of the famous French artist Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) grew as Dr. Chang saw signs in the sculptures of the medical conditions he was learning to identify. Now as a professor in Stanford’s medical school, he shows images of Rodin’s sculptures of hands to medical students and hand surgery trainees, asking them to make diagnoses and hoping the artworks will make learning more fun and memorable.
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TENTACLES: The Astounding Lives of Octopuses, Squid, and Cuttlefishes
April 12, 2014 - September, 2016
Monterey Bay Aquarium
886 Cannery Row
Monterey, CA
Journey to a world of undersea magicians, masters of disguise and quick-change artists. Our special exhibition is the largest, most diverse living exhibit ever created to showcase these amazing animals. You won't believe your eyes.
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February 7, 2013 - September 6, 2014
Anchorage Museum
625 C Street
Anchorage, AK
With stunning visual impact and an astonishing array of ocean trash, internationally recognized artists create works of art for this exhibition from debris collected from beaches around the world. Plastic packaging in a throwaway culture finds its way into our ocean biosphere and then into the hands of artists. Our oceans and beaches are awash in plastic pollution propelled by gyre (rotating ocean currents). The exhibition explores the relationship between humans and the ocean in a contemporary culture of consumption.
EXHIBITS: ABROAD
June 5 - July 25, 2014
Future Space Gallery
The Royal Institution of Australia
55 Exchange Place
Adelaide SA AUSTRALIA
Stem Cell Stories celebrates the beauty in regenerative medicine research. The images include drawings, patient portraits and research images, which help patients communicate the difficulties they face dealing with disease, or assess the merits of emerging stem cell or regenerative medicine treatments.
Know of something we haven't listed here? Send me an email at symbiartic (dot) km (at) gmail (dot) com, or tweet me @eyeforscience with the deets. If it's scienceart related, it's fair game.