PASADENA — In Lia Halloran’s combined media portray on cyanotype, “You, Me, and Infinity” (2024), two half-planetary our bodies abut on the heart of a five-panel canvas. Skinny, wavy tendrils develop out from smaller particles, suggesting mild, distance, frequencies, or alien indicators. Two pale silhouettes of kids float among the many cosmos. These imprints had been created by Hallohan’s kids mendacity on the cyanotype because it was uncovered within the sunshine. One of many legs is repeated in a ghostly echo, proof of a stressed toddler.
Halloran is likely one of the 5 modern artists who contributed new works to Crossing Over: Artwork and Science at Caltech, 1920–2020, the college’s contribution to PST ART: Artwork & Science Collide. The artists — Halloran, Lita Albuquerque, Jane Brucker, Shana Mabari, and Helen Pashgian — had been impressed by a century of monumental discoveries from the physicists, engineers, chemists, and different scientists who’ve made Caltech some of the elite scientific analysis establishments on the planet. The present is split into sections (The Infinite Garden, Time Stream, and Powers of Ten) to cluster technological developments into their very own themed galleries, notably in astronomy, physics, and chemistry — however that’s in no way each self-discipline coated on this present.
World Broad Pictures, “John D. Strong and Enrique Gaviola look into aluminized Hale Telescope mirror” (1947), digital print; Caltech Archives and Particular Collections
Crossing Over dips into Caltech’s in depth archive of images, analysis, class tasks, books, and ephemera to show how the varsity has made an influence not simply in California, however in the whole universe. Unknown makers used metal, wooden, styrofoam, and paint to construct a “Model of crystal structure of chromium carbon” (c. 1950) on campus, geological engineer Bailey Willis by chance created a “Seismogram of earthquake in Chile made by a fruit dish scraping across a sideboard (November 11, 1922)” and “‘Var Plate’ of Andromeda Galaxy seen with the Hooker telescope (replica)” (1923) reveals how Edward Hubble proved we’re not alone via his work on the Mt. Wilson Observatory.
One side of the present that makes it a gem are the candid images of legendary scientists, most credited to unknown photographers. We get to see “Richard Feynman juggling at the beach” (c. 1940), a “Jack Parsons and Marjorie Cameron wedding portrait” (1948), and “Walt Disney with Roger Hayward’s moon model” (1955), as proof that these famend scientists had been as soon as goofy colleagues.
This thought is amplified by what would be the exhibition’s most valuable objects, books by Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Johannes Kepler, all featured within the Time Stream part. The Gates Annex library, inbuilt 1917, serves because the gallery; thick, musty journals of natural chemistry encompass the artifacts. Gazing upon the etchings primarily based on Galileo’s drawings of the moon in “Sidereus nuncius” (1610) elicited cognitive dissonance for me; these astronomers have achieved such mythic standing that it’s nearly unimaginable to think about them as individuals publishing their analysis like several trendy Caltech scientist.
Prime: Jamie Molaro, “Moon Compact” (2018), etched glass and metallic. Backside: Galileo Galilei, “Sidereus nuncius” (1610), ebook; Caltech Archives and Particular Collections
Jane Brucker riffs on this sensation in her site-specific work, “Magnetic Attraction” (2024), which nestles dioramas among the many stacks of books. In her rigorously curated showcase of gold fragments, compasses, and eyeglasses, she makes use of antiques as stand-ins for data that has been handed down from one educational to a different. She has purposely chosen gadgets that really feel archaic, however are most likely trendy — like what look like 18th-century spectacles with the phrase “moon view” printed onto the lenses in a recent, sans serif typeface — to blur the lineage. The paintings was impressed by the lifetime of her longtime good friend Robert Hellwarth (1930–2021), who brushed shoulders with Nobel laureates when he was a analysis fellow on the college, then spent 50 years transferring analysis to his college students on the College of Southern California.
Crossing Over can really feel like Caltech patting itself on the again for its achievements, however that doesn’t take away from the awe of glimpsing its archives. Artists and scientists can each geek out over the exhibition, which reveals {that a} biologist’s sketches of fruit flies are simply as suave as Helen Pashgian’s green-hued resin orbs (which she made whereas an artist-in-residence on the college in 1969). It’s mentioned that all the pieces within the universe is linked. Which may be true within the universe of Caltech.
Jane Brucker, “Magnetic Attraction” (2024), compass, magnet, needles, and pictures
Edith M. Wallace, number of Drosophila melanogaster (c. 1916–33), ink on paper; Caltech Archives and Particular Collections
Helen Pashgian. “Untitled” (2023), solid urethane
Set up view of Lita Albuquerque. “This Moment in Time” (2024), synthetic gold leaf on vinyl
Crossing Over: Artwork and Science at Caltech, 1920–2020 continues at Caltech (1200 Eeast California Boulevard, Pasadena, California) via December 15. The exhibition was curated by Claudia Bohn-Spector and the venture was directed by Peter Collopy.
