This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
So much good scienceart on display... where to begin!?
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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WILDERNESS FOREVER: 50 Years of Protecting America's Wild Places
September 3, 2014 - TBD
Smithsonian Museum of Natural History
10th St. & Constitution Ave. NW
Washington, D.C.
This juried photography exhibition celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, a cornerstone of American environmental conservation. The exhibit explores the majesty, diversity, and value of the nation's wilderness areas. Approximately 50 award-winning large-format images by professional, amateur, and student photographers reveal America as you've never seen it -- wild, untouched, and free.
Also of note, The Smithsonian Libraries and Smithsonian Gardens present “The Lost Bird Project,” an exhibit by artist Todd McGrain, March 27 through March 15, 2015. This project recognizes the tragedy of modern extinction by immortalizing North American birds that have been driven to extinction. It will feature large-scale bronze sculptures of the Carolina Parakeet, the Labrador Duck, the Great Auk, the Heath Hen and the Passenger Pigeon.
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August 28, 2014 - January 15, 2015
National Academy of Sciences
2101 Constitution Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C.
The concept of deep time was introduced in the 18th century, but it wasn't until the 1980s that American writer John McPhee coined the term "deep time" in his book Basin and Range. This exhibition, which contains 18 works by 15 artists, looks at the human implications of deep time through the lens of artists who bring together rational and intuitive thinking. Artists featured use a wide range of styles and media but share a common interest in the vast timescale. This exhibition explores the role of the artist in helping us imagine a concept outside the realm of human experience.
Artists featured are Chul Hyun Ahn, Alfredo Arreguin, Diane Burko, Alison Carey, Terry Falke, Arthur Ganson, Sharon Harper, the artistic team Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe, Rosalie Lang, David Maisel, the artistic team Semiconductor, Rachel Sussman, and Jonathon Wells.
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October 16 - November 15, 2014
Joshua Liner Gallery
540 West 28th Street
New York, NY
Tiffany Bozic is a self-taught artist currently living and working in San Francisco, California. Bozic has spent the majority of her life living with and observing the intricacies of nature. Her work has the traditional air of tightly rendered illustrations with a highly emotional range of surreal metaphorical themes. In her paintings and sketches she presents her vision of life’s struggles and triumphs that are largely autobiographical. Her wide array of subjects are inspired both from her extensive travels to wild places, and the research specimens at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, California.
Tiffany Bozic was previously featured on Symbiartic in If Audubon Had Painted His Dreams.
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October 25 - November 26, 2014
School of Visual Arts Flatiron Gallery
133/141 West 21st Street
New York, NY
School of Visual Arts presents “Code Conscious,” an exhibition of prints, video and interactive installations by MFA Computer Art students and alumni. Curated by project coordinator Milan DelVecchio and assistant to the chair Ashley Rae Pearsall, the exhibition is on view October 25 through November 26 at the SVA Flatiron Gallery, 133/141 West 21st Street, New York City.
According to DelVecchio and Pearsall, “The work in this exhibition bridges the gap between the fine art and digital worlds. These artists have incorporated a variety of media, materials and cutting-edge technologies, including digital prints that rely on chance and improvisation by John Cinco (MFA 1998 Computer Art), an interactive installation that uses projection mapping to create a live painting by current student Yuxi Cao, and a sculpture that represents the tension between chaos and order in network infrastructure by Todd Brous (MFA 2006 Computer Art).
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SCIENCE INSPIRES ART: The Brain
October 11, 2014 – March 29, 2015
New York Hall of Science
47-01 111th St
Corona, NY
View images of original art (digital images, paintings, collage, installation, sculpture, etc.), inspired or informed by various aspects of the brain and new discoveries in neuroscience. The 16th international art-sci juried exhibition is organized by Art & Science Collaborations, Inc. (ASCI) and is free with NYSCI admission.
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PATIENCE, PAPER, PEN & BRUSH: Botanical Illustration by Dick Rauh
September 27, 2014 - January 27, 2015
The Brooklyn Botanical Garden
150 Eastern Parkway
990 Washington Avenue
Brooklyn, NY
Renowned botanical illustrator Dick Rauh, a fellow of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Florilegium Society, has drawn a number of trees in the living collection, including specimens from the Garden’s important bonsai collection, the focus of this exhibition. Informed by a deep understanding of botany and plant morphology, Rauh’s work brings to light the architectural beauty of plants. Displayed alongside the artist’s botanical drawings and paintings will be his chapbooks, which contain additional plant illustrations as well as poems.
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November 15, 2014 – January 19, 2015
The New York Botanical Garden
2900 Southern Boulevard
Bronx, NY
The renowned LuEsther T. Mertz Library of The New York Botanical Garden counts among its holdings many of the most beautiful and pioneering botanical and horticultural works ever created. More than eight centuries of knowledge, from the twelfth century to the present, are represented in the Library’s Collection. In this sumptuous exhibition in the Art Gallery visitors are introduced to some of the Library’s most fascinating works—exceedingly rare books, stunning botanical artworks, illustrated manuscripts, medieval herbals, exquisite garden prints and flower books, nursery catalogs, explorers’ notebooks, and more.
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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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NATURAL HISTORIES: 400 Years of Scientific Illustration from the Museum’s Library
October 19, 2013 - June 12, 2015
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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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.
Also at the museum is Nathan Myhrvold's #sciart project, The Photography of Modernist Cuisine, a playful and innovative look at food photography, previously featured on Symbiartic's Your Kitchen is a Chem Lab and this is Your Textbook.
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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.
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September 18 - November 22, 2014
Atrium Art Gallery
University of Southern Maine
51 Westminster Street
Lewiston, ME
The Atrium Art Gallery at the University of Southern Maine’s Lewiston-Auburn Campus presents Secrets of the Sea, a multi-media exhibition of work inspired by marine plants and animals. The exhibit opens September 18 and continues through November 22, and includes paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture and work in glass, metal, stone, wood, fiber, and video by 23 artists. Works in the exhibit were inspired by marine plants such as kelp and bladderwrack, invertebrate species including sea urchins, barnacles, mollusks, sea slugs, octopus, horseshoe crabs, and vertebrates such as fish and whales.
EXHIBITS: SOUTH
October 25 - November 23, 2014
Art.Science.Gallery
916 Springdale Road
Building 2 #102
Austin, TX
Quantitative or categorical, discrete or continuous, dependent or independent, variables allow scientists to measure and describe properties of the world around us. They are common to every scientific discipline and assume a wide range of possible values. With gravity and humor, precision and abstraction, record-keeping and experimentation, variables are made visible through the works of eight contemporary artists.
FEATURED ARTISTS
Carrie Crane (Boylston, Mass.), Laurie Frick (Austin, Tex.), Megan Hildebrandt (Austin, Tex.), Elizabeth McClellan (Austin, Tex.), Mark Nystrom (Boone, N.C.), Cathryn Rowe (Austin, Tex.), Francesca Samsel (Austin, Tex.), Ele Willoughby (Toronto, ON)
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BIRDS, BUGS & BLOOMS: Natural History Illustration from the 1500s - 1800s
September 12, 2014 - January 4, 2015
McClung Museum of Natural History & Culture
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
1327 Circle Park Drive
Knoxville, TN
Drawing on the collections of the McClung Museum, the University of Tennessee Library’s Special Collections, as well as private collections, this exhibit explores the fascinating intersection of art and science in the tradition of natural history illustration. From 16th century imaginings of fantastical beasts, to the extremely accurate 19th illustrations of plants and animals, the works on view highlight how increasing access to travel, technology, and books, as well as the evolution of the field of science, changed how these artful illustrations were created and interpreted.
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ART ROCKS and THE WEATHER IS TURNING WEIRD
through January 4, 2015
Museum of Arts and Sciences
4182 Forsyth Road
Macon, GA
The Art Rocks exhibition explores the earth science of Providence Canyon State Park (in Lumpkin, GA) and the art of en plein aire landscape painting. It is an exhibition of landscape paintings by Professor of Art William Jones alongside a geologic survey of the canyons by Professor of Earth Sciences Dr. James Hyatt, both from Eastern Connecticut State University. These two faculty members spent years investigating the art and sciences of the canyons. Rocks and Minerals from the Museum’s Education Collection are also on display.
The Weather is Turning Weird features the work of nationally recognized artist Nathalie Miebach. Miebach focuses on the intersection of art and science and the visual articulation of scientific observations. Ten of her woven sculptures, made of colorful reeds, rope, wood, and beads currently on display at the Museum of Arts and Sciences represent mammoth storms. Using the methodologies of both disciplines, she translates scientific data related to astronomy, ecology, and meteorology into colorful, intricate, tactile woven sculptures. Because weaving provides an effective grid through which she interprets data in three-dimensional space, her work lets us consider data from new perspectives.
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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
November 5 - 29, 2014
Oak Park Public Library Art Gallery
Main Branch
834 Lake St.
Oak Park, IL
Oak Park Artist Lindsay Olson interviewed scientists, engineers and operators at the world’s largest waste water treatment plant in Stickney, Illinois, to learn the real story about water in a dense urban area. Her art exhibit, "Manufactured River" is a celebration of this live-saving service most of us take for granted.
EXHIBITS: WEST
JASON WALKER: On the River, Down the Road
October 3, 2014 - March 1, 2015
Bellevue Arts Museum
510 Bellevue Way NE
Bellevue, WA
Northwest artist Jason Walker is widely celebrated for his skillfully executed ceramic sculpture. Treading a fine line between storytelling and social criticism, Walker's work explores the human experience as reflected in Nature. His painted porcelain works, often taking the form of wild animals domesticated by industry, are simultaneously thought-provoking and unsettling. Bridging the dichotomous worlds of nature and technology represents, for the artist, "a journey to define for myself what it means to be human in the present time."
On the River, Down the Road is a site-specific installation created by Walker, who has transformed the gallery into an enveloping, fantasy-driven world that—through richly detailed narratives and surrealist, apocalyptic imagery—offers an incisive comment on the indelible impact of humanity upon the natural landscape.
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University of Colorado Museum of Natural History
Henderson Building
15th and Broadway
Boulder, CO
Catherine Chalmers is a multi-media artist whose work focuses on the complex relationship between nature and culture. Using video, photography, drawing and sculpture, her work aims to give form to the richness, as well as the brutality and indifference that often characterize our connection with animals. She uses art as a medium to explore and expand her involvement with nature and to discover a way to broaden the cultural significance of the non-human world.
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MICHAEL SCHULTHEIS: Dreams of Pythagoras
November 5 - December 23, 2014
Winston Wächter Fine Art
203 Dexter Ave. North
Seattle, WA
Trained in mathematics and economics, Michael Schultheis began painting after becoming captivated with the artistic mathematical notations he would see on the chalkboards of his professors. In his latest exhibition, Schultheis pays homage to Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570 BC – c. 495 BC), a Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of Pythagoreanism. Schultheis’ gestural abstract paintings explore a range of blue tones from lapis lazuli to topaz found in the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas – all blues that Pythagoras would see on his voyages between Athens, Alexandria, and Syracuse. These hues and the equations found within the paintings are a visual representation of Pythagoras’ philosophy that mathematics interconnects everything within the experience of life. He explores this interconnectedness further through the use of a beautiful snail-like shape known as a limaçon. The geometry of the limaçon becomes a model for the relationship between equations, stories, philosophies, and events the artist is experiencing in his personal life.
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through December 31, 2014
Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium
5400 North Pearl Street
Tacoma, WA
Imagine a fearsome shark with a circular saw where the usual jagged teeth might be. Now imagine that shark as 24 feet long and weighing about 1,000 pounds. If you had lived, say, 270 million years ago, you might have seen such a creature. These prehistoric whorl tooth, or "buzz saw," sharks went extinct eons ago. But this summer at the North Pacific Aquarium you'll get an in-depth look at these fantastic creatures--as part of a special exhibit by the Idaho Museum of Natural History featuring the art of Alaska artist Ray Troll and the sculpture of Gary Staab.
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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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ELEVATIONS: Art by Lucy Conklin
October 18, 2014 - January 11, 2015
Hayward Shoreline Interpretive Center
4901 Breakwater Ave.
Hayward, CA
A walk from Mount Diablo to the Hayward shoreline would cross through many ecosystems, each with their own unique set of inhabitants. Some of these creatures have very specific needs and limited ranges. Others are more adaptable and seem perfectly at home in an urban backyard. This collection of work by science illustrator Lucy Conklin explores the vast array of wildlife in the East Bay, and some of our unusual visitors. Whether they are long time residents, returning to their natural habitat after a long hiatus, or an oddity passing through unexplained, their journeys have a story.
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THE NEW LANDSCAPE: Experiments in Light by Gyorgy Kepes
July 24 - November 17, 2014
Cantor Arts Center
328 Lomita Dr.
Stanford, CA
This exhibition explores the question of art’s relevance in a scientific age through the work of Hungarian-born Kepes1American artist, designer, and visual theorist Gyorgy Kepes (1906–2001). Forty-five panels depict what Kepes, associated with Germany’s Bauhaus and Chicago’s New Bauhaus, called the “new landscape” of scientific imagery—microscopic minerals, cellular patterns, and tissue fibers—as well as Kepes’s own experiments with camera-less photographic techniques. The exhibition is one of the first projects resulting from a $500,000 grant awarded to the Cantor and the Department of Art & Art History from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to facilitate research conducted by Stanford Ph.D. candidates on the Cantor’s collection.
EXHIBITS: ABROAD
October 17 - November 29, 2014
GV Art Gallery
49 Chiltern Street,
Marylebone, London
Lost in fathoms where two continents collided an island once stood. The 34th International Geological Congress termed the era the Anthropocene: an age where mankind has become a geophysical force impacting earth and its ecosytems in supra-human time. Is the disappearance of the island a one-off or a direct consequence of the Anthropocene?
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BLOOD: Not for the Faint-Hearted
October 24, 2014 - January 25, 2015
Science Gallery Dublin
The Naughton Institute
Pearse Street
Trinity College
Dublin, Ireland
BLOOD took us by surprise. In developing this exhibition, we’ve been amazed by the diversity of ways that blood can captivate. From artists to surgeons, designers to scientists — in any two contexts blood has an entirely different meaning. It can be a life-saving donation, or an obsession with the undead, a taboo or a commodity. Sometimes its symbolism is treated ironically, while other times it is grotesque, mythical or medical.
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.