When Great Minds Thought Alike

Far from working in isolation, artists and scientists have drawn inspiration from one another for 250 years – as Tilly Blyth, curator of a new Science Museum exhibition, tells Ellie Cawthorne

- Ellie Cawthorne

Picture an artist daubing streaks of paint on to a canvas. Next, imagine a scientist meticulously studying samples in the lab. Initially these two figures may seem the antithesis of one another – one striving for unconstrained self-expression, the other for order and reason. But as a new exhibition at the Science Museum demonstrates, the disciplines of art and science are far from polar opposites. Rather, the similarities between them can prove more illuminating than the differences, and cross-pollination has been an important driving force for both over the past 250 years.

“When it comes down to it, whether you’re capturing the essence of a landscape or grappling with the concept of dark matter, you’re ultimately striving for the same thing – to understand the world around you,” says Tilly Blyth, curator of the exhibition, and one of the presenters of the Radio 4 series. “Success in both disciplines relies on creativity and imagination – the ability to jump further and think beyond.”

ENLIGHTENING IDEAS

As the exhibition reveals, this symbiotic relationship can be seen in a wealth of fascinating artworks and objects. One of the earliest is Joseph Wright’s c1766 oil painting A Philosopher Giving That Lecture on an Orrery, in Which a Lamp Is Put in the Place of the Sun, showing a red-robed man of science demonstrating the movements of the solar system using a planetary model.