Two new exhibits arrive at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art

A new exhibit in the art museum poses the question of whether art and science mix by exploring the relationships between the arts and the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math.

“It was my desire to showcase art and science integrated, not just at the end but also at the inception of scientific investigation,” said Mark Koven, co-curator to the exhibit “ARTsySTEM: The Changing Climates of the Arts and Sciences” displayed in the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art.

Koven wanted to show how art can be used as an integral tool for solving problems both regionally and globally by showing ways that artists and scientists can work together.

“A lot of the artists are either influenced by the scientists or they’re working directly in science areas,” said James Hansen, a landscape architecture junior and museum employee. “They’re doing their own research and that’s a part of their work.”

Mediums in the exhibit ranged from lithographs, video installations and oil paintings to sculptures, diagrams and mixed media.

Subjects varied as well as artists focused on showcasing ecological and environmental situations both historically and contemporarily.

“You’ll see pieces that were done 30 years ago that talk about water usage, land erosion, destruction of the environment,” Koven said, “but actually come out with plans to fix them where they worked with ecologists or environmentalists that are scientists to try and create blueprints for creating or solving problems that even back then already existed.”

There’s been a growth in the past few decades, Koven said, where more artists are finishing school with science degrees, such as ecology and biology, and using those degrees in the creation of functional art. In the past, however, artists were more inclined to work with scientists than to do the scientific methodology themselves.

“I feel like there’s a lot of disconnect sometimes between the arts and the sciences,” said Ali Snow, an alumna working in the museum. “It’s cool that they’re kind of building a relationship between the two, because there’s so much overlap you can do and each discipline kind of enhances the other.”

One of the biggest similarities between the two fields, Koven said, was that they both work from intuitive perspectives and are creative in their problem-solving.

“We’re both looking at the world around us and trying to make sense of it,” he said, “trying to show the invisible and make it visible, trying to have people around us experience the same things we see, so it’s also about sharing that experience or that information or data.”

The only difference he saw was that artists were more concerned with getting their message across, through means such as metaphor, rhetoric, satire or even lies. Scientists, on the other hand, are more interested in making sure what they do is based on truth and provable facts to get their point across.

The goal of ArtsySTEM is to show the similarities between the two fields and to promote the ways they could combine.

“I would say that the arts can bring more of a creative, more like critical-thinking sort of aspect to the sciences,” Snow said, “and the sciences kind of gives more structure and boundaries to the art. I think it, when you combine the two, has a kind of synergistic effect and can become greater than the sum of its parts.”

Koven agreed.

“I think the world is way too complex these days to just be approached from one direction or one philosophy or one type of discipline,” he said. “So for me, art and science are natural. They just absolutely fit together because of their desire to get to the truth and sort of make the unseen seen.

In addition to the newly-opened ArtsySTEM’s exhibit, NEHMA unveiled a second exhibit called “The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: 50 Works for 50 States.”

This exhibit is comprised of 50 works of art, donated by the Vogels to the state of Utah. The collection hosts many mid 19th-century artworks from the beginning of the minimalist and conceptual movements.

“The Vogels, their emphasis in collecting was conceptual artists and also artists that were up-and-coming, and a lot of those artists now are really famous and really important in the world of art,” Hansen said.

Dorothy and Herbert Vogel started their collection as middle-class wage earners and passionate lovers of art. In 1965, they decided to use Dorothy’s salary for living expenses and Herbert’s salary for buying and collecting art.

“They ended up accumulating almost 5,000 objects and decided to donate all of it first to the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.,” Snow said. “They didn’t have enough space for that much artwork so they decided that they wanted to donate 50 works of art to each state in the United States, so 2,500 works in total.”

USU received the honor of housing the collection gifted to Utah, and this is the first time all the pieces were shown together, Hansen said.

NEHMA was founded in 1982 and has collected over 5,000 different artworks over the years. It also hosts many traveling exhibits, events, talks and educational programs.

“Part of its mission statement is works of art that focus on modern and contemporary art and also art of the western United States,” Hansen said.

The other part of the mission statement is it to reach out to the community through education, Snow said.

“It has an amazing collection,” Koven said. “There’s some really great things that are going on, not just on campus, but also in the museum itself, and you really can go there to see things that you’ve never seen before and will probably never see again because they have such a unique collection.”

The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Both exhibits will stay through the summer.

“When I was a student, I was just working down the hall as a music student and didn’t realize all the cool things that were going on in the museum,” Snow said, “so I encourage students to take a look at it.”

— lormialor@gmail.com