Together, art and science help us to interpret, study and explore the world around us.
Examining this ongoing relationship, The Art of Innovation: From Enlightenment to Dark Matter looked at the interaction between scientific progress and social change, how machinery has both influenced and threatened the human body and how tools that go beyond human senses can capture the unseen.
Iconic artworks on display included works by Hepworth, Hockney, Lowry, Constable, Boccioni, Turner and contemporary artists Cornelia Parker and Conrad Shawcross.
The exhibition brought together loans from Tate, National Gallery, V&A, National Museums Scotland, the Estorick Collection and more alongside rarely displayed objects from the Science Museum Group’s Collection. Through four sections and twenty stories, visitors discovered how we have questioned our relationship with society, our bodies, the environment and found patterns in nature, as we continue to interpret and explore the world around us.
- In partnership with BBC Radio 4, a landmark 20-part radio series is available as a podcast on BBC Sounds.
- An accompanying book published by Transworld is available from the Science Museum Shop.
Exhibition Highlights
A Philosopher Giving that Lecture on an Orrery in which a Lamp is put in the Place of the Sun by Joseph Wright, exhibited 1766.
© Derby Museums Trust
'Troubled Horizons’ section of the exhibition featuring Turner’s ‘Rain, Steam, and Speed’, 1856.
Detail of a conoid string surface model, made by Fabre de Lagrange, France, 1872.
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum, London
"Scientific Researches! - New Discoveries in Pneumaticks! - or, an Experimental Lecture on the Powers of Air". Coloured etching by James Gillray, published 23 May 1802 by Hannah Humphrey St James's Street, London.
Science Museum Group Collection
Artificial wooden "peg leg", (sometimes known as a "socket" leg) issued to above knee amputees. There have been extensive 'home' repairs. Made c.1930.
Science Museum Group Collection
Moorees formboard used at Rowntree's chocolate factory.
Science Museum Group
Oil sketch 'Study of sky and trees' by Constable.
Given by Isabel Constable 1888 courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum London
Samples of fabric based on X-ray crystallography data designed for the 1951 Festival of Britain.
Science Museum Group Collection
A visitor admires fabric samples inspired by X-ray crystallograph.
Silk skirt and blouse dyed with Sir William Henry Perkin's Mauve Aniline Dye, unsigned, England, 1862-1863
Science Museum Group
Visitors in the ‘Sociable Science’ section of The Art of Innovation.
