What this exhibition explores
Illustrated Worlds explores how images preserved in old books—such as engravings, diagrams, botanical drawings, and early photographs—were used to visualize knowledge.
The exhibition examines how people once interpreted nature, science, society, and the cosmos through the medium of illustration.
Why this exhibition was conceived
The exhibition begins with a question: what do these images reveal about the human desire to understand the world before modern technology existed?
Many of these visuals were created not as artworks but as tools of explanation. Yet, when viewed today, they display a striking aesthetic and conceptual clarity that transcends their original purpose.
This exhibition seeks to reconsider these images not merely as historical documents but as cultural artifacts shaped by observation, imagination, and the pursuit of knowledge.
The perspective that shapes this exhibition
Illustrated Worlds brings together images across vastly different fields—botany, astronomy, geology, sociology—through a single lens: the act of making the invisible visible.
Rather than focusing on their scientific accuracy or historical context alone, the exhibition highlights how each image interprets reality, constructs meaning, and frames the world through visual form.
What this exhibition explores
Illustrated Worlds explores how images preserved in old books—such as engravings, diagrams, botanical drawings, and early photographs—were used to visualize knowledge.
The exhibition examines how people once interpreted nature, science, society, and the cosmos through the medium of illustration.
Why this exhibition was conceived
The exhibition begins with a question: what do these images reveal about the human desire to understand the world before modern technology existed?
Many of these visuals were created not as artworks but as tools of explanation. Yet, when viewed today, they display a striking aesthetic and conceptual clarity that transcends their original purpose.
This exhibition seeks to reconsider these images not merely as historical documents but as cultural artifacts shaped by observation, imagination, and the pursuit of knowledge.
The perspective that shapes this exhibition
Illustrated Worlds brings together images across vastly different fields—botany, astronomy, geology, sociology—through a single lens: the act of making the invisible visible.
Rather than focusing on their scientific accuracy or historical context alone, the exhibition highlights how each image interprets reality, constructs meaning, and frames the world through visual form.
What this exhibition explores
The Shape of Knowledge examines how images preserved in old books—engravings, diagrams, botanical drawings, astronomical charts, early photographs—gave form to ideas long before modern visualization tools existed.
The exhibition explores the ways in which people once interpreted nature, science, society, and the cosmos through images, revealing how knowledge was shaped, structured, and communicated visually.
Why this exhibition was conceived
The exhibition begins with a simple question: how did earlier generations visualize what they sought to understand?
Many of these images were created not as art objects but as instruments of explanation—yet, when viewed today, they exhibit an aesthetic precision and conceptual ambition that far exceed their original purpose.
The Shape of Knowledge invites viewers to reconsider these works not just as historical artifacts but as evidence of a long-standing human impulse: to give shape to the unknown through observation, imagination, and visual form.
The perspective that shapes this exhibition
Rather than presenting these materials strictly through scientific accuracy or historical chronology, The Shape of Knowledge brings together images from disparate fields—botany, astronomy, geology, sociology—through a shared perspective: the visual shaping of understanding.
The exhibition highlights how each image interprets reality in its own way, constructing meaning through line, structure, scale, and symbol.
Through this lens, the works collectively demonstrate how visual representation has long served as a bridge between the seen and the unseen, the known and the not-yet-understood.