Projects in Symbiosis
Symbiosis network
Symbiosis promotes projects involving the arts and humanities in natural history museums and museums with natural history collections in order to share and develop practice and initiatives. Here is a selection of the projects that members of the network have been involved in developing.
The Nature of Knowledge: Literary Humanities and Global Challenges in Museums of Science (2023 - )
Museums of natural history are where we learn about the world and our place in it. We now live in a time of global challenges that will require complex solutions, and we can look to cultures like the Middle Ages to find inspiration. Medieval manuscripts were literally “books of the world”: they were made of animals, plants and minerals. To read was to connect to the world physically as well as mentally. We need this kind of “ecological thinking” now to raise science literacy and awareness around global challenges. Medieval ways of thinking, as seen in manuscript culture, can help us understand and respond to our new world.
Temple of Science (2020)
Built in the 1850s, Oxford University Museum of Natural History uses sculpture, painting and design to embody scientific principles and discoveries. This series of illustrated podcasts offers a guided tour of the art and architecture of the museum, revealing how leading scientists collaborated with Pre-Raphaelite artists to create one of the great masterpieces of the Gothic Revival.
HOPE for the Future (2019-23)
A project to protect and share Oxford University Museum of Natural History’s unique and irreplaceable British Insect Collection, to restore the Museum’s historic Pre-Raphaelite Westwood Room, and to create the Ellen Hope Gallery featuring new permanent displays on British insects.
A Window on Nature and Art (2018-22)
The natural and man-made objects collected in the Brandenburg-Prussian Kunstkammer are among the oldest surviving items of Berlin’s current museum collections. For the first time, the project reassembles the Kunstkammer collection in all its complexity by looking at the biographies of individual objects.
Life, As We Know It (2018-24)
Beginning in 2018, the Life, as we know it redisplay project at Oxford University Museum of Natural History has involved the conservation of thousands of specimens and the development and installation of 36 new exhibits housed in state-of-the-art showcases.
Drawing Out the Dinosaurs (2018-20)
An exhibition pioneered by the Lapworth Museum of Geology, Birmingham, revealing how the history of extinct life is an art history as well as a natural history.
Visualizing Science (2017)
A research project, led by the Naturhistorisches Museum Vienna, tracing how evolutionary science has been encoded in art at natural history museums.
Visions of Nature (2016-20)
A series of arts projects, exhibitions and commissions at Oxford University Museum of Natural History reviving the close connection between science and art at the museum.
Building the Book of Nature: The Poetics of the Natural History Museum (2015-18)
A collaboration between Mount Allison University and the University of Birmingham, funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, tracing the meanings of architecture and decorative art in natural history museums in Britain, Ireland and Canada.
Art/Nature: Artistic Interventions at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (2014-18)
An international model project at Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, with the support of the German Federal Cultural Foundation, opening an experimental space for interactions between contemporary art, museum practice and natural history research.