Please Joins us for our first Weeknights at the Wagner lecture of 2012. This program is free and open to the public. The museum will stay open until 7 PM for this event. The Lecture begins at 5:30 PM.
Come early to explore our unparalleled natural history collection and National Historic Landmark building — just around the corner from your campus!
“What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Fertilization Imagery in the Art of Gustav Klimt, Frida Kahlo, and Diego Rivera”
An illustrated presentation by Dr. Scott F. Gilbert, Swarthmore College
Saint Valentine’s Day, a celebration of love between intimate companions, is often symbolized by images of hearts, doves, cupids and… embryos? Images of fertilized cells and fetuses may not be traditional icons for Saint Valentine’s Day, but a few unconventional 20th-century artists used these modern scientific depictions to speak about love, passion, politics, and society.
Dr. Scott Gilbert, a Professor of Biology at Swarthmore College, recently made the fascinating discovery that Klimt, Kahlo, and Rivera all depicted images of fertilized cells and embryos (often with scientific accuracy) in their artwork, and each to convey a unique, powerful message. Scott will take an in-depth look at their paintings to see how they merged science and art, and to explain the meaning behind their deliberate appropriation of scientific images of cells.
Join us to examine this fascinating period in history when science and art intermingled – when biology influenced artistic creativity and created a new language for political and social commentary. Scott Gilbert will again bring science to art with new insight into the history, and meaning of these works.
How does an artist paint love? How will you represent and communicate love this Valentine’s Day? We recommend consulting a biology textbook for inspiration and bringing your date to this lecture.
Dr. Scott Gilbert is the Howard A. Schneiderman Professor of Biology at Swarthmore College and is a Finland Distinguished Professor at the University of Helsinki. He teaches developmental genetics, embryology, and the history and critiques of biology. His award-winning research looks at the ways in which evolution is a product of embryological changes. Dr. Gilbert’s work has been published extensively in academic journals and he is the author of three textbooks
Photographs, left to right: Gustav Klimt, photograph by Josef Trcka, 1914. Frida Kahlo, photograph by Carl Van Vechten, 1932. Diego Rivera, photograph by Carl Van Vechten, 1932.
