Caltech’s Century Of Art And Science Colliding
Before PST ART bids a fond farewell: More Art Shows of Note from 2024: CAL TECH
BY TOM TEICHOLZ
FEBRUARY 13, 2025, Updated September 24, 2025
Jane Brucker, “Time Poem” (2024), Digital clock, clock, wood and textiles. Photograph by Gene Ogami.
EXCERPTS
One of the most interesting and surprising PST Art and Science Collide exhibits was not at a museum or gallery, it was Cal Tech’s, Crossing Over: Art and Science at Caltech 1920-2020, which ran from September 27-December 15, 2024, and featured artworks by Los Angeles artists Shana Maberi, Jane Brucker, Lita Albuquerque, and Helen Pashgian, among others.
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The magical art tour at Caltech next led us to the Gates Annex, a building that seems modern in comparison but that to today’s eyes is dated to a style favored in the 1960s—a tall white tower. Artist Jane Brucker had installed a display in the building’s small library, Time Stream which considers the power in the attraction of opposites. In front of the Gates Annex, Lita Albuquerque, who exhibited at Caltech’s Baxter Gallery in 1974, installed This Moment in Time, a sparkly gold span or bridge across the building’s reflecting pool outside. It made me think of the yellow brick road in the Wizard of Oz, but actually. the website informed me, “the gold refers to the creation of the precious metal and other chemical elements through nuclear fusion reactors within stars – a process theoretically and experimentally studied in landmark research by Caltech physicist William A. Fowler and his colleagues in the 1950s and 1960s.”
Over in the historic Dabney Lounge, there was a fascinating and unexpected exhibition that explored Caltech’s use of imagery for scientific purposes, such as seismology, particle physics and planetary science, as well as a particular role Caltech played in the US military’s Manhattan Project that produced the first Atomic Bombs. Declassified photos of the mushroom cloud, and photo paper exposed to nuclear radiation as well as other artifacts made for a unique exhibit, one I won’t soon forget.
TOM TEICHOLZ is an award-winning journalist and best-selling author, documentary filmmaker, and has been a consultant to individuals, corporations, museums, and not-for-profits on their exhibitions and content.