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Light!

Heinz Architectural Center Apr. 7–July 29, 2001
Installation view of Hélio Oiticica
Installation view of Hélio Oiticica at the Witte de With, center for contemporary art, Rotterdam, 1992, featuring Hélio Oiticica’s Bilaterals and Spatial Reliefs, 1959–1960

Light! The Industrial Age 1750-1900, Art & Science, Technology & Society focuses on the era when discoveries about natural and artificial light transformed art as well as everyday life. By experiencing masterpieces of art, rare scientific instruments, and interactive demonstrations, visitors can discover the revolutions in light that were as earth shaking to our ancestors as the digital revolution is to us today.

Light! brings together more than 300 scientific and historic objects, as well as the works of major painters and other artist of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for the first time- many have never been exhibited in the United States.

In addition to displaying science, art, and technology side by side, Light! offers interactive displays that allow visitors to gain hands-on experience with crucial discoveries in the history of light: Newton’s prism experiments, primitive photography, the invention of telescopes and microscopes, theories of vision, and the visual effects of light from different sources.

Exhibition Images

Installation view of Hélio Oiticica
Installation view of Hélio Oiticica at the Witte de With, center for contemporary art, Rotterdam, 1992, featuring Hélio Oiticica’s Bilaterals and Spatial Reliefs, 1959–1960
Hélio Oiticica's B 33 Box Bolide 18 Homage to Cara de Cavalo,
Hélio Oiticica, B 33 Box Bolide 18 “Homage to Cara de Cavalo,” 1965–1966
Hélio Oiticica's Nildo da Mangueira with Paran- golé P15 Cape 11 I Embody Revolt
Hélio Oiticica, Nildo da Mangueira with Paran- golé P15 Cape 11, “I Embody Revolt,” 1967
Hélio Oiticica's Tropicália, PN2, and PN3
Hélio Oiticica, Tropicália, PN2, and PN3. Installation in Nova Objetividade Brasileria at Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janiero, 1967
Hélio Oiticica with Box Bolide 9
Hélio Oiticica with Box Bolide 9, 1964

Support

Light! was organized in partnership with the Van Gogh Museum and presented only in Amsterdam and Pittsburgh. The exhibition is sponsored by Byer Corporate and The PNC Financial Services Group.

Major support has been provided by the Carnegie Museum of Art Women’s Committee, an anonymous donor, and an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. Funding has also been provided by Duquesne Light, The Grable Foundation, The Buhl Foundation, and The Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation, Inc.