In Bologna, an exhibition between art and science celebrates 500 years since the birth of Ulisse Aldrovandi

The Golinelli Arts and Sciences Center in Bologna presents until May 28, 2023 the exhibition Beyond Space, Beyond Time. The Dream of Ulisse Aldrovandi, curated by Andrea Zanotti, Roberto Balzani, Antonio Danieli and Luca Ciancabilla and produced by Fondazione Golinelli and Sistema Museale di Ateneo, Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna. An exhibition and research project between art and science that offers an unusual and original combination of artifacts and objects from the museum collections of the University of Bologna, immersive and interactive technical-scientific exhibits, paintings by Bartolomeo Passarotti, Giacomo Balla, Mattia Moreni, works of art including paintings, sculptures and installations by Nicola Samorì and objects, instruments, videos and images from theEuropean Space Agency. Therefore, a research path between the past and futuristic scenarios is here proposed to the public. All interwoven with poetic plots, visionary glances of scientists experts in Artificial Intelligence and neuroscience and humanists, with the narrative support of a new “alphabet,” composed of unpublished glyphs and designed for the occasion.

The dialogue between art and science is intended to be the key to interpreting the course of History and to codifying new patterns that will allow intercepting new trajectories of development of society. in line with this reflection, the exhibition gravitates around the figure of Ulisse Aldrovandi (Bologna, 1522 - 1605), one of the greatest natural scientists of his time, whose 500th anniversary of birth is celebrated this year. Thanks to his extraordinary ability to observe, catalog and preserve the artifacts that nature, in the course of its making, has left behind, Aldrovandi is in fact the proponent of the modern Natural History Museum, a place of memory and knowledge, in which the ancestral fund of our origins is sedimented.

However, the work of the Bolognese naturalist is not only projected into the past: his fantastical capacity, perfectly embodied by what can be considered his most astonishing writing, the Monstrorum Historia, a universal treatise on monsters and other supernatural prodigies, places Aldrovandi’s work beyond time and on the threshold of another world. The power of imagination opens the door to the future, to worlds that have never, or not yet, existed. Ulisse Aldrovandi embodies two souls, namely that of a scientist, an observer of a reality that has already been, and that of an artist, who imagines and gives shape to what will be, pushing himself to unveil scenarios destined, as science progresses, to be transformed into reality.

“Art and science represent the pillars on which human knowledge is based, the development of which is historically characterized by continuous paradigm shifts and reversals,” said Andrea Zanotti, president of Fondazione Golinelli. "If since the Renaissance man has been the measure of all things, at the center of a world that wants and can be known in all its infinite specificities, today this paradigm turns out to be overturned: from being a subject firmly at the center of the explored and explorable, man has now become the object of scientific-technical progress that is determined no longer, and not only, by his will. Man has been transformed into the product of his own capacity for calculation and imagination, of a technological progress that, in its most advanced frontiers, continuously imagines and reprograms humanity and its future: no longer Homo sapiens but Homo caelestis now projected into the dilated space of the cosmos."

“The city of Bologna, in the name of Aldrovandi, now presents a series of exhibition opportunities connected by an ideal passage of witness: from the Renaissance context of the exhibition on Raphael in the Pinacoteca, to the restitution of the great proto-scientist’s project at Palazzo Poggi, to the suggestions disclosed by the visionary paths, between art and science, in the near future. A truly unrepeatable cultural conjuncture,” added the president of the University Museum System Roberto Balzani.

The exhibition aims to highlight the faults of discontinuity that formed the stages of man’s cognitive journey and offer visitors the tools to reflect on the progress of humanity.

The exhibition begins with humanity’s entry into History, the moment that marks the beginning of all that is knowable and the origin of man as a sentient being. The task of welcoming visitors is entrusted to a number of works by Nicola Samorì, an artist who continuously moves from sculpture to painting, back and forth in time and, plundering the Western iconographic heritage, operates a rewriting of the history of art and imagination.

It continues by moving forward into the age of the scientific revolution, a crucial milestone that opens the door to modernity and the infinite possibilities that knowledge and imagination, art and science, offer mankind. The spirit of the time is perfectly embodied by the figure of Aldrovandi, whose “ideal” study is reproduced in a scenographic manner. Visitors can admire some of the most significant mirabilia from the collections of the Science Museums of the University of Bologna’s Sistema Museale di Ateneo, such as fossils, minerals, meteorite fragments, and dinosaur eggs. Two of the Bolognese naturalist’s most relevant works, his Herbarium and his famous Historia Monstruorum, dialogue with period paintings and contemporary works with a naturalistic background, highlighting the symbiotic relationship between science and art. This link is also developed in a virtual dimension, with the reconstruction of a Wunderkammer that holds other precious Aldrovandian treasures that traveling humanity will take with it on its journey toward progress.

The audience is then taken into the future, to a setting that reproduces a human settlement on Mars, the last frontier stage reached by mankind, now projected toward the frontiers of the universe and knowledge. In this section, visitors have the opportunity to experience, through interactive and immersive exhibits, some of the new conditions in which humanity will find itself living in the not-too-distant future: cabins simulating hibernation, which is necessary to cope with interstellar travel (stations to simulate a diet suitable for survival in space and, again, multisensory installations to discover the smells of the universe). A second Wunderkammer, mirroring the Aldrovandian one, is intended to represent a window to the past: what things will humans have to take with them as a reminder of humanity, nature and life on Earth? The station will be accessible to visitors, who can compose their own personal chamber of wonders.

Also featured in the exhibit are objects fromESA, the European Space Agency, tools and artifacts that scientists and engineers have built to push the frontiers of space exploration further and further and design humanity’s future on other planets. These include some models of space habitation settlements and bricks made with 3D printing for the construction of lunar bases, inventions that will enable humans to build architectural complexes in space, using innovative materials such as moon dust. The human body in space travel will also undergo decisive transformations due to extreme conditions, such as weightlessness and exposure to gamma rays. On display are prototypes of human bones produced with three-dimensional bioprinting, a technology that will meet the need for astronauts to cope with medical emergencies, such as the need to perform surgeries.

Many questions are raised about the fate of humanity and the future of existence. The exhibition concludes with a selection of works intended to reread the physicality of man, his transfigurations and dissolutions, from futurism to Nicola Samorì’s disturbing sculptural deformations.

The exhibition is part of the broader celebrations of the 500th anniversary of Aldovrandi’s birth, and sees synergy with the exhibition The Other Renaissance. Ulisse Aldovrandi and the Wonders of the World, organized by the Sistema Museale di Ateneo, running until April 10, 2023 at the Museo di Palazzo Poggi in Bologna. The public can enjoy cross-discounts to visit both exhibitions.

For all info: www.ilsognodialdrovandi.it

Hours: Tuesday through Friday 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Closed Mondays.

Tickets: 12 euros full, 9 euros reduced; 10 euros workshop + guided tour for children and youth.

The exhibition has the patronage of the Ministry of Culture, the Emilia-Romagna Region and the Municipality of Bologna. Media partnership Rai Cultura. Thanks to Banca di Bologna.

Photo by Rodolfo Giuliani

In Bologna, an exhibition between art and science celebrates 500 years since the birth of Ulisse Aldrovandi

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