Witnessing the Invisible: An Air Pump in the Art Gallery

An exhibition centered around Joseph Wright of Derby's masterpiece "An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump" becomes a starting point to examine how witnessing experiments with air pumps were critically important for the transfer of scientific knowledge during the Enlightenment and after.

Featuring Otto von Guericke's 1672 publication "Experimenta nova (ut vocantur) Magdeburgica de vacuo spatio"

Produced for the exhibition "Science and the Sublime: A Masterpiece by Joseph Wright of Derby"