September 20, 2024 to February 16, 2025
SEEING TRUTH - Art, Science and Museums in the Production of Knowledge
How do we see the world?
Where should we go to find the truth? And whose truths should we believe?
On the basis of these guiding questions, the exhibition “Seeing Truth” shows how art, science and museums have worked together to produce – and sometimes distort – truth and knowledge. With examples from two centuries, visitors can discover how illustrators, painters, photographers, sculptors and model-makers artistically process scientific research results and thus visually construct knowledge. It is not uncommon for the boundaries between art and science to disappear in the process. The exhibition's leitmotif illustrates this connection in a special way. Commissioned by the American Museum of Natural History, the illustrator Arthur A. Jansson created the cover of a scientific publication in 1929. A group of palaeontologists are working on an excavation, with the mighty figure of a Tyrannosaurus Rex appearing in the background. Here, the illustrator attempts to strike a balance between scientific precision and trivialization and represents the art form of “paleo-art”, which is still alive today. Artists add their ideas of muscles, skin and colors to the remains of prehistoric animals and thus reconstruct the prehistoric animal and a corresponding environment. Other works in the exhibition show how art has shaped our view of the invisible and obscure (e.g. UFOs) or how artists have long been involved in the visual construction of human types on behalf of scientific research institutions. Works by the Heidelberg artist Joachim Lutz, who accompanied research expeditions to Africa at the end of the 1920s, are shown as examples of this. Contemporary artists such as the American Benjamin Ripley attempt to deconstruct such categorizations in an exciting way. The exhibition is the result of a collaboration between the Mark Twain Center for Transatlantic Relations and the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut, USA, and was developed in close connection with the research project “The Future of Truth”. “The Future of Truth” is an interdisciplinary research project led by Prof. Alexis L. Boylan and Prof. Michael P. Lynch, which is partially funded by a generous donation from the Henry Luce Foundation. It examines what truth is today and whether and how it will be important in the future.
Information on visiting the exhibition
Opening hours
Wednesday to Sunday from 1 to 6 pm
closed on December 24, 25, 31 and January 1
Admission
Admission is free.
Guided tours
General information about guided tours can be found here.
Supporting program
Guided tours, lectures. Click here for the digital calendar of events.
Contact us
Römerstr. 162, 69126 Heidelberg
Telephone 06221 58-34065
from Monday to Thursday: 08.30-13:00,
Friday: 08.30-14.30
E-mail: mark-twain-center@heidelberg.de
Accessibility
The special exhibition area is accessible without steps. Spacious toilets and a disabled toilet are available. Further information on the accessibility of the museum for people with various disabilities can be found here.
