New Cantor Fitzgerald Exhibit Explores Intersection of Art and Science

Envisioning Science: Photographs by Felice Frankel, a new exhibit at Haverford's Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, runs Friday, November 2 through Sunday, December 2. An opening reception for the exhibit will be held Friday, November 2 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. in the gallery, and a tea and talk with Felice Frankel will be held Monday, November 12, at 4:15 p.m. in the Sharpless Auditorium of the Koshland Integrated Natural Sciences Center (KINSC). In addition to Envisioning Science, there will be a concurrent exhibit featuring scientific images and text drawn from research conducted by Haverford's students and faculty. A self-guided tour of the KINSC's art/imaging holdings will also be available. Felice Frankel's work will be presented digitally on six 42-inch flat panel LCD monitors, which will run DVD loops of her work and accompanying text. Also on display will be a photographic print of her image“Frankel Ferrofluid,” which is owned by Haverford's Science Library. Of her work, Frankel says,“Like equations in mathematics and structural formulae in chemistry, these images are intended to communicate ideas. They are a visual representation of physical phenomena revealing hours of scientists' thinking, years of preparation, and lifetimes of exploration.” She calls the images products of a collaborative process, as, she says,“I worked with scientists who embraced my sometimes never-ending questions. Together, we discovered the power these visual representations of ideas bring to communication and clarification.” Felice Frankel is a Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, where she heads the Envisioning Science program at Harvard's Initiative in Innovative Computing (IIC). She is also a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Working in collaboration with scientists and engineers, Frankel has seen her work published in more than 300 journal articles, covers, and other publications. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and has received grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation. She is also the 2007 winner of the prestigious international Lennart Nilsson Award for Scientific Photography. Frankel's latest book, Envisioning Science: The Design and Craft of the Science Image, is now available in paperback. She is also co-author, with Harvard chemist George M. Whitesides, of On the Surface of Things: Images of the Extraordinary in Science. Her column“Sightings” appears regularly in American Scientist magazine. Both the Frankel exhibit and the Haverford student/faculty exhibition of images is presented in conjunction with this fall's“Imaging in Science” faculty development seminar. Exhibits and seminar are made possible with support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the John B. Hurford '60 Humanities Center, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Phillips Distinguished Visitors Program. The faculty sponsor of the Frankel exhibit, Associate Professor of Physics and Director of the KINSC Suzanne Amador Kane, worked with Amy Slaton, a historian of science from Drexel University, to create Art or Data, an exhibit of 12 works and accompanying essays by Haverford science students and faculty that reflect the many ways imaging is used in scientific research on campus. Faculty members represented in the exhibit include Karin Akerfeldt (Chemistry), John Dougherty (Computer Science), Rob Fairman (Biology), Jerry Gollub (Physics), Rachel Hoang (Biology), Peter Love (Physics), Nick Ouellette (Physics Postdoctoral Fellow), Bruce Partridge (Physics/Astronomy), Jenni Punt (Biology), and John Wagner (Biology). The featured students are Byron Drury '08, Emily Hinchcliff '08, Andrew Kim '10, Justin Meyerowitz '09, Andy O'Hara '09, Rowan Spivey '07, and Ari Wassner '00. Visitors to the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery are also invited to tour the art collection displayed in the nearby KINSC during the hours of 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday. Holdings include prints by Eric Heller, a Harvard chemist who produces computer-generated art based on his theories of the quantum world, Dennis Kunkel's striking micrographs of cells and microorganisms, and Ted Kinsman's photographs of the natural world, as well as oil paintings and sculptures from Haverford's Special Collections. Maps suitable for a self-guided tour will be provided so visitors can view the more than 35 paintings, photographs, and sculptures on permanent display. Located in Whitehead Campus Center, the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery is open Monday-Friday 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Saturday and Sunday noon-5 p.m., and Wednesdays until 8 p.m. For more information, contact Matthew Seamus Callinan, Campus Exhibitions Coordinator, at (610) 896-1297 or mcallina [at] haverford.edu.