Exhibition rooms were made bare for imagery with such vivid and strange colors and shapes that its hard to believe that these images are in fact real life forms, just microscopically zoomed in. At the beauty in science exhibition in Boijmans van Beuningen museum, this kind of scientific imagery is on display, only taken out of its scientific comfort zone.
You could discuss if this is in its favor or not. On one hand having a different audience looking at ‘scientific’ imagery might give light to those who don’t understand what their seeing, to make use of the visual aesthetic and inspire them. But on the other hand they are also taking a risk, in a way like art, by showing a whole different audience things they understand themselves. A lot of people looking at it most probably won’t.
A majority might end up aimlessly walking around the museum wishing they had microscopic goggles. Just like some who go to art galleries and instead of thinking about the ‘message’ of a painting, instead think something more like: I wonder if her boobs looked like that in real life.
But no matter what they were trying to achieve, this exhibition could certainly change your way of thinking that there’s so much more visually to our world that we couldn’t get our head around it. But I don’t think this is something groundbreakingly new and for allot of people the beauty in science exhibition will do nothing more then the name says, show us the beautiful side of science, but if it will do more then that, I guess is just a matter of opinion.