ANALYZING ART AND AESTHETICS (ARTEFACTS: STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 9).

Analyzing Art and Aesthetics is part of the Artefacts series published by the Smithsonian Institution in a joint partnership with the Deutsches Museum and the Science Museum of London. The premise of the series is to consider what can be discovered by looking across boundaries, and by bridging science, technology, and art; academic inquiry and museum work; art history, history of science, museum studies, and the applied arts. This volume, edited by Anne Collins Goodyear and Margaret A. Weitekamp, focuses on three key themes: models as aesthetic objects; the aesthetics of technology; and artists who respond to and interpret science and technology. A succinct summary of the volume’s underlying philosophy and investigative approach is presented by artist Shih Chieh Huang in one of the concluding essays: ‘[o]ur knowledge comes from the limits of human perspective’ (p. 270). Thus Huang recalls the insights of Lynne R. Parenti, curator of fishes and research scientist at the Smithsonian Institution and his mentor in the Smithsonian’s Artist Research Fellowship Program. If we can only know that which we already know to look for, then new ways of looking are key to broadening our insights. Collectively, these essays make a convincing case for the value of crosspollination between art, aesthetics, science, and technology, across the studio, the gallery, and the research essay. The table of contents reveals a cornucopia of intriguing topics. From mercurial pigments to artificial-tree cellular towers, from fanciful depictions of flying machines to applied colour systems, the sheer variety of material covered here is an invitation to dig more deeply. Appropriately, the contributors are also a varied crew: they come from the arts and sciences, the academy and the museum, several are exhibition designers and programmers, and one is an artist. Essays are thus both theoretical and applied, some favouring an analytical approach and others tending towards an accounting of projects and programmes. Together they make up a lively, quick-moving volume that is often illuminating, sometimes surprising, and never boring. The book is divided into four sections: ‘Models as Aesthetic Objects’; ‘Aesthetics of Technology’; ‘Artists Interpret Science and Technology’; and ‘Collaboration in Action’ (the last focusing on the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship Program noted above).