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Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College
87 North Main Street, Oberlin, OH 44074
440.775.8665

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Science on Display: Cultural Experiments in Early Modern Science

January 17 - July 20, 2025
In Southwest Ambulatory

Science on Display: Cultural Experiments in Early Modern Science

January 17 - July 20, 2025
In Southwest Ambulatory

The early modern period (1500–1800) was marked by a tremendous newfound interest in the study of the natural world. European scholars encountered, examined, and circulated familiar and novel plants alike, documenting their origins and characteristics and displaying them in print and in the first museums created from their collections. This hands-on approach was mirrored by surgeons and doctors who studied the human body in anatomy theaters and sought to lay bare its secrets. Inherited systems of classification from ancient thinkers like Aristotle, Galen, Pliny, and Dioscorides gave way to a new emphasis on empirical learning and fresh debates on the natural order of things.

These developments made people reconsider not only the relationship between humans and plants but also the social hierarchies within European society. Empirical but lower-status practitioners like apothecaries, barber-surgeons, anatomists, and gardeners challenged the way that knowledge was produced and called into question previous academic authorities. In doing so, they gave themselves a place in the Scientific Revolution.

This exhibition, drawn from the Allen’s collection, showcases the innovation that characterized scientific and medical thought during the early modern period, both within the academy and the spaces of practitioners. Comparing these works offers opportunities to consider the myriad ways new knowledge was produced and displayed in this moment of change. It also makes one ask: whose contributions are seen as valid, and why?

Image: William Hogarth (English, 1697–1764), The Reward of Cruelty, plate 4 from the series The Four Stages of Cruelty, 1751. Etching and engraving. Annie A. Wager Bequest, 1975.232.

Organized by

Ellen Wurtzel

Associate Professor of History

Hannah Wirta Kinney

Former Curator of Academic Programs

Marlise Brown

Assistant Curator of European and American Art

With assistance from

Elsa Friedmann (OC 2024)

Students in Of Miracles and Microscopes: A History of Science from 1200–1800 (History 208)

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