‘From Enlightenment to Dark Matter
A Summary of The Friends of St Anne’s Virtual Zoom Webinar Lecture
TUESDAY 9th FEBRUARY 2021
BY Dr TILLY BLYTH – Head of Collections & Principal Curator of the Science Museum.
Dr Tilly Blyth discussed the Book published in 2020 she has written with Sir Ian Blandford Director of the Science Museum.
We were delighted to finally welcome Dr Tilly to give her wonderful lecture in February 2021 by Zoom Webinar. She was originally booked to give her lecture live in June 2020, but of course we had to postpone it. We were so delighted to reschedule her recently!
Based on The Art of Innovation: from Enlightenment to Dark Matter, a landmark Science Museum and BBC Radio 4 series, book and exhibition, Dr Tilly discussed the connections between science and art over the last 250 years, showing how science, just as much as art, informs and creates our culture
At the Museum Tilly is responsible for the museum’s Curatorial, Research, Library and Archives departments. Most recently the team opened the £24 million Medicine: the Wellcome Galleries, transforming the first floor of the Science Museum and displaying over 3,000 objects from the world’s largest medical collection.
The team have also delivered award winning galleries and exhibitions on subjects as diverse as Top Secret: the history of GCHQ, Mathematics, Robots, Cosmonauts: the Russian Space story and Illuminating India: 500 years of science and technology. Tilly was also Lead Curator of the Information Age gallery, which explored 200 years of information and communication networks and how they have transformed the world.
- A special thanks to Sylvia Chitty – an Aunt to Dr Tilly and her husband who kindly introduced Dr Tilly to us
We welcomed around 114 people including those that watched via the YouTube recording available for a week after the actual lecture.
Several people put interesting questions to Dr Tilly via the Q&A and Chat button.
We also received wonderful feedback from the audience – A few examples as follows
- ‘I enjoyed Tilly’s talk very much – she is a very engaging speaker & her passion for her subject really brought it alive’.
- ‘Splendid lecture this evening – best sort of mix of information and pleasurable listening’
Dr Tilly gave us a superb insight into the extraordinary world of the links between science and art – many of us will be looking at clouds and master’s paintings with a more inquisitive eye – I am sure it sems so obvious when she explained and showed us examples, but we still need her amazing expertise to understand it with meaning.
And ……From comments received from the evening it was clear that many of the audience cannot wait to get to the Science Museum – specially to see the new Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries. We all hope its soon for Dr Tilly and her colleagues – it must be so frustrating to be closed when they have put so much research, time, and effort into staging them.
Lorraine Neale – Chairman the Friends of St Anne’s Church – February 2021
