Visualizing the Invisible: Observation and its Discontents in the History of Art and Science

Catalog description

Dinosaurs, birds of paradise, planetary eclipses, transitory facial expressions, and disembodied wombs: over the last few hundred years, naturalists have engaged with scientific and artistic methodologies in visualizing and representing objects that have evaded the human eye and hand. From anatomical theaters to observatories, natural history museums, and laboratories, researchers, writers, and illustrators have struggled with the politics and poetics of visualizing and communicating “invisible” objects—things that were too far away, too small, too fleeting, or otherwise hidden from plain sight. Asking how scientists and artists are trained to see, we will study the history of observation (or lack thereof) from approximately the fifteenth century to the present, interrogating various technologies, methodologies, and intellectual frameworks on a global scale. This class will include readings from the history of science, art history, museum studies, and beyond as we ask what it means to see, to translate, to represent, and to display objects and bodies that have eluded capture.