Our recent effort to galvanize people around great #sciart on Twitter was a raging success, proving to us that science art is growing by leaps and bounds. These scienceart exhibits are ones you can see in the flesh and are popping up all around the country. Get out and see them while you can!
EXHIBITS: NORTHEAST REGION
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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November 17, 2014 - April 29, 2015
National Academy of Sciences
2101 Constitution Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C.
Collapse is an installation created in response to the global crisis occurring in the world's fisheries and the current threat for the unraveling of the Gulf of Mexico's food chain following the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. This large-scale installation, a pyramid display of hundreds of preserved fish and other aquatic organisms in gallon jars, recalls the fragile interrelationships between Gulf species. Empty containers represent species in decline or those already lost the extinction. Brandon Ballengée created Collapse in collaboration with Todd Gardner, Jack Rudloe, Brian Schiering, and Peter Warny.
Also on view is Ghosts of the Gulf, a series of prints made from scans of chemically cleared and stained specimens collected in the Gulf of Mexico after the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The species depicted and numerous others may be in decline. The prints are meant to be seen as apparitions. The chemical process of clearing and staining specimens involves multiple steps, revealing the complex architectural anatomy of these beautiful species. Although the images look like brightly colored X-rays, Ballengée actually scanned each chemically altered specimen millimeter by millimeter to make detailed recordings. He then assembled the layers in Photoshop to create the final artworks.
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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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NATURAL REMAINS: Mixed Media Artwork by Jessica Baker
April 4 - May 17, 2015
The Brooklyn Botanical Garden
150 Eastern Parkway
990 Washington Avenue
Brooklyn, NY
Drawing inspiration directly from leaves, seeds, and other natural materials she has collected, local artist Jessica Baker uses innovative and original processes to create unique prints on paper and directly on leaves, as well as mixed-media works. Also on display is a site-specific installation Baker designed specifically for the Garden.
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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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March 19 - June 30, 2015
Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA
This exhibition features drawings and watercolors of bird nests with a focus on the natural and man-made materials incorporated into these architectural structures. Photographs of forest understory will transport the viewer between the landscape and the ephemeral artifacts that signify the remains of a cycle of building, incubating, nesting and fledging. The featured artists are Sue Abramson, Wendy Brockman, David Morrison and Kate Nessler. The creators of these drawings and watercolors of bird nests and photographs of transitional landscapes are inspired by the relationship of the nest to time, place, music and architecture. Each artist has imbued the structures and the materials used and the locations and environments where built with their individual insight and perspective. Also included in the exhibition is a selection of birds, nests and eggs on loan from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
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March 7 - April 10, 2015
The Art Gallery
Franklin Commons
400 Franklin Avenue
Phoenixville, PA
The Art Gallery at Franklin Commons will hold a unique exhibition themed “The Art of Science,” beginning with an opening reception on Saturday, March 7, from 1 to 4 p.m., which will run until April 10. The gallery will display scientific-related works ranging from sculptural FM radios to detailed paintings of skin cells and more. The exhibit is free to attend, with musical accompaniment.
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SPRINGS, SPROCKETS, & PULLEYS: The Mechanical Sculptures of STEVE GERBERICH
TBD
The Discovery Museum and Planetarium
4450 Park Avenue
Bridgeport, CT
Constructed from old machine parts, kitchen utensils, furniture scraps, lighting fixtures, medical supplies, toys and carnival figurines, Gerberich mixes the aesthetics of contemporary sculpture with the principles of simple mechanical motion. From a pack rat's treasure trove of motors, toys, and other bric-a-brac, Gerberich is an alchemist of odds and ends and always searching for possibilities. A self-proclaimed lover of hand tools or any useful invention without a power cord, his Brooklyn studio in Williamsburg is his own treasure trove of machine parts, motors, fixtures, lampshades, and armies of collectible figurines. He can often search his packed shelves for inspiration, where he turns discarded labor-saving devices into fantastical sculpture.
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THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF MODERNIST CUISINE
July 11, 2014 - TBD
Museum of Science
1 Science Park
Boston, MA
The Photography of Modernist Cuisine reveals the colorful and surprising world of food as you have never seen it before. Accomplished scientist, author, and photographer Nathan Myhrvold uses hyper-magnified shots and cutaway views of food and cooking implements to offer a fresh perspective on familiar food sources. His work is evidence that the intersection of science and art can be as beautiful as it is enlightening. The Photography of Modernist Cuisine was developed by The Cooking Lab, LLC.
Nathan Myhrvold's project was previously featured on Symbiartic's Your Kitchen is a Chem Lab and this is Your Textbook.
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January 20 - April 12, 2015
Michele & Donald D'Amour Museum of Fine Arts
21 Edwards Street
Springfield, MA
Above the Fold celebrates the extraordinary artistic achievements being made in the world of contemporary origami. Master artists Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine (Canada/USA), Vincent Floderer (France), Miri Golan (Israel), Paul Jackson (UK/Israel), Dr. Robert J. Lang (USA), Yuko Nishimura (Japan), Richard Sweeney (UK), and Jiangmei Wu (China/USA) transform paper into breathtaking sculpture, large-scale installations and conceptual works that express contemporary social, political, and aesthetic ideas. The size of the featured works ranges widely, with some like Jiangmei Wu’s Ruga Swan measuring almost 20 feet in length, allowing the viewer to walk underneath and see the piece from different perspectives.
Origami, literally meaning “paper folding,” has evolved from a Japanese craft into a highly expressive, global art form that intersects and impacts the realms of art and science. Today, artists from all over the world are folding paper into increasingly elaborate and provocative sculptural works, while scientists and mathematicians are using origami to unlock the mysteries of the universe. Since even our DNA is folded, origami artist Paul Jackson has expressed, “You and I are born from folding.” We are all, in essence, works of origami.
EXHIBITS: SOUTH
March 7 - April 11, 2015
Art.Science.Gallery
916 Springdale Road
Building 2 #102
Austin, TX
Austin based photographer Robert Shults grew up with a passion for sci-fi movies and outer space exploration, and was drawn to physics as photographers and physicists share in common the same basic tools — light, space and optics. In 2009, Shults was introduced to the Texas Petawatt Laser facility, an unparalleled research laboratory in Austin, Texas that at the time produced the most powerful laser pulse in the world. When he witnessed the laser in action he knew it had to be the subject of his next photography project.
The Superlative Light presents a layman photographer’s awestruck tour of this hallowed facility located in the bowels of the University of Texas at Austin where an elite group of scientists conduct experiments that are impossible to imagine — daily releases of a force that constitutes the brightest light known to exist in the entire universe. The Petawatt laser can produce, for a fraction of a second, more power than the entire U.S. electrical grid.
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The Flora and Fauna of Catesby, Mason, and Audubon
August, 2014 - ongoing
McClung Museum of Natural History & Culture
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
1327 Circle Park Drive
Knoxville, TN
Mark Catesby (1683–1749) was one of the first in a succession of naturalists who sought to illustrate in their art the ecological relationships between plants and animals. This interdependence would be fundamental to the hand-colored copper plate engravings he did for The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, London, 1729–1747. Almost 100 years later, John James Audubon (1785–1851), assisted by his student Joseph R. Mason, accurately painted the environments in which to place the birds illustrated in The Birds of America, London, 1827–1838.
The exhibit features over sixty Catesby prints and Audubon Octavo prints from its collections that illustrate the integration of flora with birds and other animals, in the pull-out drawer case in the entrance to the Decorative Arts gallery.
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FIELD GUIDE: James Prosek’s Un/Natural World
March 7 - August 2, 2015
North Carolina Museum of Art
2110 Blue Ridge Road
Raleigh, NC
Self-taught artist, natural historian, writer, world traveler, and adventurer, Prosek has observed wildlife in a diverse variety of habitats, including Turkey, Micronesia, Zimbabwe, the Bahamas, the Eastern Seaboard, and the American West. His paintings, drawings, and sculptures explore the human need to classify and categorize nature as a way to understand it. At once startlingly realistic and skillfully manipulated, his meticulous renderings of birds, fish, and mammals move beyond illustration into artistically interpreted portraits that capture the essence and personalities of his subjects and often provide provocative commentary on current environmental issues.
James Prosek was featured on Symbiartic previously in Who Needs a Paintbrush When You Can Use a Dead Fish? and Forget Jackalopes, I Want That.
EXHIBITS: MIDWEST
March 6 - April 25, 2015
Thomas McCormick Gallery
835 W. Washington Boulevard
Chicago, IL
30 new paintings that celebrate connectivity to nature by examining color and structure in micro-macro relationships. These colorful and highly textured works of art utilize pigments generated by remediating polluted streams in Ohio. Sabraw has been collaborating with environmental engineers in a ongoing effort to establish a self-funding process that cleans toxic sludge from streams polluted from improperly sealed coal mines, and turns that sludge into valuable pigments
John Sabraw was recently featured on Symbiartic in Modern Day Alchemists Turn Toxic Runoff Into Valuable Pigments
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LEONARDO DA VINCI: Man-Inventor-Artist-Genius
January 24 – May 17, 2015
Alden B. Down Museum of Science & Art
1801 W. Saint Andrews Rd.
Midland, MI
On April 15, 1452, a man was born who changed the world like no-one else before: Leonardo da Vinci. Born in the small Tuscan town of Vinci, this farmer’s son grew to become one of the greatest geniuses of all times. He was an artist, sculptor, architect, art historian, natural scientist, musician, writer and inventor. The exhibition showcases Leonardo’s inventions, ingenuity, artwork & more, including:
60 invention models, mostly interactive
23 artistic masterpieces replicated to scale
4 interactive computer stations, with simulations of his inventions
Movie theater presenting a documentary film of his science and art works
Time room chronologically presenting historical and personal events in Leonardo’s lifetime
Leonardo’s little-known musical compositions
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February 6 - May 17, 2015
Reedy Gallery
Minnesota Landscape Arboretum
3675 Arboretum Drive
Chaska, MN
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. Weird, Wild, and Wonderful invited the artist to seek visually unusual plants and create works of art that celebrate the bizarre, yet beautiful flora of the world. This is the second stop on the exhibit's tour which will be on display in various parts of the country through 2016.
EXHIBITS: WEST
A NATURALIST AND AN ARTIST: John J. Audubon & Kevin Sloan
March 7 - May 31, 2015
Fine Arts Center
30 West Dale Street
Colorado Springs, CO
John James Audubon painted and published Birds of America, from which there are many large-scale prints now in the FAC’s permanent collection. This will be the first time these magnificent prints have been exhibited in many years. Kevin Sloan is a contemporary painter who lives and works in Denver, Colorado. Sloan’s exquisitely painted works remain faithful to the tradition of precise depiction of birds while maintaining a contemporary quality that is uniquely his own. He invests in his paintings an evident affection for the subjects and their habitats, as well as a contemporary environmental narrative - both of which were absent from Audubon’s analytical depictions.
This exhibition occupies two adjacent galleries, one with Audubon’s prints from the FAC collection and the other with Sloan's paintings. The two distinct galleries allow for a visual dialogue in which each artist’s work is complementary to the other, yet inhabits its own world – Audubon in the 19th Century and Sloan in the 21st. In addition to working with FAC Museum Director and Chief Curator to select the Audubon prints for the exhibition, Sloan composed 15 new paintings in direct response to the Audubon selections for this exhibit.
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Flocks of Secrets, Swarm of Lies
February - March 2015
The Art Gallery at Umpqua Community College
1140 Umpqua College Rd.
Roseburg, OR
Flocks of Secrets, Swarms of Lies is an international exhibit of Bioart featuring works created by ten artists from Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and the United States. The artists are Cara Cole, Natalie Draz, Helga Jakobson and Alexis Williams, all from Canada; Sopie Linsey, Great Britain; Rahni Allen, Tazmania; Sarah Fagan, Laura Grossett, Susan Rochester, and Elena Thomas, all from the United States.
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FOLDING PAPER: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami
January 29 - June 20, 2015
Brigham Young University Museum of Art
North Campus Drive
Provo, UT
Folding Paper is a groundbreaking exhibition that explores the evolution of origami from craft to fine art and its stunning modern-day applications in the fields of mathematics, engineering, design, and the global peace movement. In these artists’ hands, paper is a medium for infinite creativity. Works by 45 master folders from around the world — from countries as diverse as Japan, the United States, Uruguay, and Russia — showcase the power and potential of contemporary origami. In these artists’ hands, paper is a medium for infinite creativity. The works range from lifelike and representational to mathematical and computer-generated to lyrical and abstract to social and political.
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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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MY DOUBLE LIFE: From Artist to Mathematician and Back
February 6 – March 29, 2015
Mohr Gallery
Community School of Music and Arts
230 San Antonio Circle
Mountain View, CA
Maria Klawe is a renowned mathematician, computer scientist and thought leader. She is the president of Harvey Mudd College and holds the honor of being their first female in that position. Prior to that, she served as Dean of Engineering and Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University. But in addition to her many notable accomplishments in academia, she is fascinated by patterns, shapes, complex structures, light and shadows which she explores through painting. She has found that an understanding of pattern and structure can yield useful answers to mathematic challenges in algorithms, data structures and complexity theory. Painting, especially watercolors, has remained as much a focal point of her life as mathematics and computer science. This watercolor exhibition includes paintings of snow trees, inspired by some beautiful photos by Mike Gradziel, an engineer working on the Mars Rover; mountain paintings, inspired by the Canadian Rockies; and a Ganges Delta painting, inspired by a mapscape series for her children.
EXHIBITS: ABROAD
SHIVER: *EBOLA * INFLUENZA* MEASLES* SARS* WEST NILE VIRUS*
April 1 - April 25, 2015
Redhead Gallery
401 Richmond Street West
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
Elaine Whittaker is a Canadian artist inspired by an aesthetic in which art and science intersect. Her artworks have been shown in group and solo exhibits, nationally and internationally. These include, among others, Science Gallery (Dublin, Ireland), Plug In Institute for Contemporary Art (Winnipeg), Red Head Gallery (Toronto), Ontario Science Centre (Toronto), Yukon Arts Centre Gallery (Whitehorse), McMaster Museum of Art (Hamilton), Kunsthaus Santa Fe (San Miguel de Allende, Mexico), and the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit (Michigan). She has been an invited participant in residencies, workshops and festivals on science and art, and her work has been featured in literary, academic, medical, and scientific periodicals, websites and blogs. She is a recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council, and holds a BFA (York University, Toronto), a Fine Arts diploma (Toronto School of Art), and a BA (Carleton University, Ottawa).
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.
