Dibner's "Heralds of Science" Featured in Exhibition Are Now on the Web

SCIENCE AND THE ARTIST'S BOOK, AN INNOVATIVE EXHIBITION WHICH honors the Dibner Library gift and Bern Dibner's Heralds of Science (1955, 1980) is the Libraries' first online exhibition on its Home Page . The show, which opened in May, explores the links between scientific and artistic creativity through books. The exhibition pairs up 27 distinguished scientific texts (such as Euclid's Geometry and Marie Curie's article on radioactive substances) with artist's books that were created in response to the themes, illustrations, or theories presented in the scientific works. The historic texts are drawn from a collection of 200 rare editions known as "the Heralds of Science" which were assembled by Dr. Bern Dibner and are now housed in the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology. Book artist Julie Chen who incorporates structure as a key element in her books, selected Watson and Crick's landmark article (Nature, 1953) with its first drawing of DNA, and built a spiral double helix rising out of a book. The show includes Tycho Brahe's Letters of Astronomy (1596), Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859), and Wilbur Wright's article on aviation (1901).

Smithsonian magazine published an illustrated article about the exhibition ("Science defined by the hands of a book artist," June 1995), and the show has been favorably reviewed on Internet listservs and in the local press. Science and the Artist's Book was funded by the Glen Eagles Foundation and the Smithsonian Special Exhibition Fund. The exhibition's design, editing, and production was by the Smithsonian Office of Exhibits Central, and most of the photography was done by the Smithsonian Office of Prints and Photographic Services.

Inspired by the first printed version of Pliny's Natural History (1469), Molly Van Nice created an imaginative but unreadable script for Plinitude, drawing elements of the natural world into the artist's book. (Rick Vargas)