Celebrating Yale’s quantum physics

NEW HAVEN MUSEUM EXHIBIT MARRIES SCIENCE AND ART

For the past two decades, scientists at Yale have been instrumental in the development of quantum physics, with one current project being a new type of computer utilizing quantum mechanics that could, in theory, outperform anything currently in use.

The New Haven Museum wanted to pay tribute to these innovators and the groundbreaking work that is being done by staging “The Quantum Revolution: Handcrafted in New Haven,” an art exhibit on display until Sept. 16.

The exhibit features five detailed drawings enlarged onto metal panels by artist Martha W. Lewis, and her art captures high-tech history in the making. Florian Carle, who manages the Yale Quantum Institute, serves as guest curator for the exhibit.

“I realized that people don’t want to talk about quantum physics because it’s a hard topic,” he said. “The idea was to mix art and science together, so I started to build an artist in residence program, and Martha was the first artist we hired for a year-long residency in 2017. She spent a year interacting with researchers and the students, and she spent a lot of the time sketching what she was seeing in the lab.”

A number of Lewis’s sketchbooks are included in an exhibit case, drawn from direct observation in the Becton labs. There’s also a series of objects in the exhibition’s display cases that are superconducting qubits that were invented, designed, and built by Yale researchers.

“When I was a resident, I was kicking around in the lab and going through people’s offices, and many had squirreled really interesting historic bits of this and that, and I started collecting it and putting them into display cases,” Lewis said. “This was a way of interacting with the researchers and telling the history of all that was being done.”

Lewis explains that the whimsical names of the pieces in the show, such as "jellyfish," "hedgehog," "hippopotamus" and "octopus," are just efforts to disguise the inventiveness and power of the devices crafted by hundreds of researchers in the Becton Center labs at Yale University.

“I did this as a way of spending time in the lab and talking with the researchers, and as I would sit there and draw them, I could ask questions and one of the things that was really striking was that they were all really attached to their devices — it’s a very close bond,” she said. “It’s almost like having an old car that you fix-up yourself. They would rather playfully give them names based on the personality of the machine, but also in competition with each other, and a lot had to do with pop culture.”

The exhibit also includes photos, equipment and tools that pay tribute to the scientists and their work.

“One of the reasons I wanted to do this was to bring back the human side of things,” Carle said. “Yes, it’s a hard topic and it’s something that you might not understand, but it’s people like you and I who are making these things. You don’t need to be scientifically minded to enjoy this — it’s about the art.