Campuswide Exhibition Bridges Art and Science at Caltech

This fall, Caltech is participating in Getty's landmark event, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, with three projects exploring the interconnections between art and science. One of those projects is Crossing Over: Art and Science at Caltech, 1920–2020, a campuswide public exhibition presented by Caltech Library that opens on September 27 and runs through December 15.

Crossing Over spans six locations across campus—three galleries and three contemporary art installations—and tells the story of how scientific discovery and visual culture have shaped one another at Caltech. The exhibition highlights objects from the Caltech Archives and Special Collections, including rare books, scientific illustrations, molecular models, paintings, photographs, and more. Crossing Over is also accompanied by a visual catalogue of essays on the history of science and art at the Institute.

"We have done smaller history of science exhibitions before," says university archivist and head of Archives and Special Collections Peter Collopy, who spearheaded and directed the Crossing Over project. "But this is on a scale that is absolutely new."

The entry point to the self-guided exhibition begins with an installation along Bechtel Mall, Spectrum Petals (stop 1 in the map above), a colorful collection of mirrored acrylic sculptures by artist Shana Mabari. Mabari has collaborated with Shinsuke Shimojo, the Gertrude Baltimore Professor of Experimental Psychology, on past work including optical illusion displays.

Spectrum Petals leads visitors toward a gallery located in the Ronald and Maxine Linde Laboratory for Global Environmental Science, The Infinite Lawn (2), which explores historical astronomy imagery and incorporates the building's solar telescope, which projects a live image of the Sun.

In the Gates Laboratory of Chemistry Annex, the Time Stream gallery (3) examines how scientists and artists have imagined, observed, and studied the universe over the past 500 years. In addition to artwork by Jane Brucker and archival materials, the gallery features rare first-edition books by Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo from Caltech's collection.

Just outside Gates Annex, the bridge spanning the reflection pool below Caltech Hall glimmers with artificial gold leaf-plating that ripples in the wind. The installation, This Moment in Time (4), by Lita Albuquerque commemorates the 50-year anniversary of her first exhibition at Caltech's Baxter Art Gallery in 1974.

Powers of Ten (5) in Dabney Hall lounge is the largest gallery in the exhibition. It traverses science visualization from the smallest particles to the expanse of the cosmos and across diverse scientific disciplines. The gallery includes a large-scale original artwork, You, Me, and Infinity by Lia Halloran, a recent Caltech artist-in-residence and collaborator with Kip Thorne, Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus. Powers of Ten also features artwork and data visualization by Hillary Mushkin, research professor of art and design in engineering and applied science and the humanities and social sciences and a co-organizer of the Data to Discovery project.

The final stop, at the Chen Neuroscience Research Building, features an untitled installation (6) by artist Helen Pashgian, who was the first female artist-in-residence at Caltech in 1969. The space features one of her luminous resin "lens" sculptures.

"It was at Caltech in the late 1960s that Pashgian first began experimenting with polyester resins that still form the primary material for her art," says Crossing Over curator Claudia Bohn-Spector. "Today, Pashgian is one of the leading representatives of Southern California's famous Light and Space movement, renowned worldwide for her ephemeral and transformative sculptures. We are absolutely delighted she shared her work for this special occasion, providing a powerful endpoint to an exhibition that starts with a live image of the Sun."

For members of the campus community, Collopy says Crossing Over is an opportunity to gain "a new sense of the history of the place, of the historical resources that exist in the archives, and of the potential in the current moment for integrating the visual into science and engineering research." And for everyone else: "This exhibit is an invitation to people who don't have a connection to Caltech to form one."

Crossing Over: Art and Science at Caltech, 1920–2020 is free, self-guided, and open to the public. Visiting hours for the indoor galleries are Wednesdays–Sundays, 11 a.m.– 4 p.m.