Science, history team up with art to create trio of exhibits
The Cornell Fine Arts Museum in Winter Park has time on its mind.
Space, too.
Its latest exhibition, “Time as Landscape: Inquiries of Art and Science,” has proved too vast for the Cornell’s building at Rollins College. So the museum has curated an additional science-meets-art exhibit at the Orlando Science Center in Loch Haven Park.
The two disciplines have more in common than you might think.
“Artists and scientists use the same skills,” said Jeff Stanford, vice president of marketing for the Orlando Science Center, in the park north of downtown. “They both ask big questions, theorize and experiment to get to their final results.” The venue is exhibiting “Steady Observation,” one of the first shows
at its up-and-coming gallery.
Representatives of both institutions hope the companion exhibits illustrate how art is a critical component of education, an argument made by proponents of STEAM — the philosophy that stresses the use of science, technology, engineering, the arts and math to guide student learning and critical thinking.
“The artists included in the exhibition desire to understand, question and describe the subject of time,” many with a scientific viewpoint, wrote Abigail Ross Goodman in the exhibition catalog. She and Amy Galpin of the Cornell curated the show.
With the Cornell’s space taken over by science-based works, its permanent collection was available to travel.
“We wanted some of the historic collection to be on view in the community when the whole museum here is dedicated to contemporary art,” said Cornell director Ena Heller.
More than 40 works landed across the street from the Science Center — at the Mennello Museum of American Art.
Galpin curated “Time and Thought” for the Mennello, using the Cornell collection to highlight important ideas and events in American history.
“The pictures included in this exhibition can relate to serious issues and events such as class difference, Manifest Destiny and the American Civil War,” said Galpin. Artists represented include Jacob Lawrence and Grandma Moses.
“It is exciting to create a new inspiring narrative about American art that resonates as timely and thoughtful and as important today as it was when created,” said Shannon Fitzgerald, the Mennello’s executive director.
Meanwhile, among the works on view at the Cornell: photographs made with heat-sensing technology, taken with a military-grade camera; a striking image of maps of Damascus, Syria, overlaid with frantic, jarring brushstrokes; and a cube of glass irradiated in the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan. That piece by Trevor Paglen, titled “Trinity Cube,” will later go to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
At the science center, “Steady Observation” occupies space dedicated to showcasing works of art; the gallery, which opened in 2016, complements the center’s mission, said Stanford.
“Some people think science is complicated or boring, but we try to eliminate those barriers,” Stanford said. “For many people, art is a lot more interesting in science.”
The works chosen by the Cornell staff include sculpture, video and photography. Many pieces focus on nature — such as new ways of seeing birds and butterflies.
The Cornell has a history of making its art accessible to the community. Admission to the museum has been free since 2013. And the Cornell curates the art in the nearby Alfond Inn, which is owned by Rollins. More than 100 new works went on display there this summer, including Argentine artist Tomas Saraceno’s “Cloud Cities — Nebulous Thresholds,” a distinctive glass installation mounted under the glass dome of the inn’s conservatory.
Commissioned for that space, “Cloud Cities” works with the natural environment, reacting to the strength and position of the sun.
“It will feel different if you
come see it in the morning than if you come at night,” Ross Goodman said.
In the main exhibition at the Cornell, Saraceno is exhibiting art he creates around spider webs.
“He credits the spiders,” said Ross Goodman. “He wants his art to be a way into understanding the natural world, to think about creating a better world.”
The curators believe the intersection of art and science
can stir the soul, as well as engage the brain.
“You see science represented in a poetic way,” Galpin said.
“We hope this exhibit will take us out of our daily life and put us into something bigger,” added Ross Goodman. “It stretches our imagination to think about time and space.”