Haarlem, Teylers Museum, January 2025
Long essays need to be written about this wonderful place. It is hugely interesting to see how this object - part of the most enormous electrostatic machine of the 18th century - today makes us think of Jeff Koons, how our aesthetic perceptions intervene with the unrivalled importance of this device for late 18th century science; what we have here (the photo only shows a small part), is the ultimate hightech device of the 1780s. It also is a very beautiful object. Is it beautiful because of its scientific glamour? Is it beautiful because, in the 1780s, scientific instruments had been as isolated from other contexts as they are today? Teylers Museum is a museum for everything we today call arts and science, and it is never clear where the boundary needs to be drawn. This is a place that is as much about boundary drawing as about bringing together diverse domains. I simply adore this place.
Haarlem, Teylers Museum, January 2025
Long essays need to be written about this wonderful place. It is hugely interesting to see how this object - part of the most enormous electrostatic machine of the 18th century - today makes us think of Jeff Koons, how our aesthetic perceptions intervene with the unrivalled importance of this device for late 18th century science; what we have here (the photo only shows a small part), is the ultimate hightech device of the 1780s. It also is a very beautiful object. Is it beautiful because of its scientific glamour? Is it beautiful because, in the 1780s, scientific instruments had been as isolated from other contexts as they are today? Teylers Museum is a museum for everything we today call arts and science, and it is never clear where the boundary needs to be drawn. This is a place that is as much about boundary drawing as about bringing together diverse domains. I simply adore this place.