Surreal Science

Glass flowers

Joris Loudon (New York, 1942) became enchanted by scientific objects when he saw the beautiful glass flowers by glass artists Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka in the Harvard Museum of Natural History in 1998. With a background as a collector of contemporary art, he immediately saw these objects' beauty, enigma and unusualness and intended initially to learn more about nature. The glass jellyfish, magic lantern slides with extinct animals and the stuffed toad he owns are works of art. His collection now consists of many objects of various materials: plaster, velvet, ivory, glass and paper. They are casts, minerals, illustrated books, prints, drawings and anatomical models.

New perspective

Artist Salvatore Arancio (Catania, Italy, 1974) is fascinated by nature and the human obsession to understand that nature. He chose 250 objects from Loudon's collection and combined them with sound, light, video, and his objects, placing them in a new perspective. This creates a mysterious and wonderful installation, a fascinating cross-pollination of art and science in the oldest museum in the Netherlands.

Surreal Science

The exhibition was on view in the autumn of 2018 at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. Thanks to a collaboration with Whitechapel, a second version of this exhibition can be seen from 17 February to 3 September in Teylers Museum in Haarlem.

Realistic Science can be seen in the Boekenkabinet from 21 January to 16 July. This exhibition uses books from the historical library of the Teylers Museum to show why scientific models and illustrations were so crucial for research and education in the 19th and early 20th centuries.