Reflections on the Natural History Museum: The Art of Iridescence and Nature’s Jewels

The paper reviews a new interdisciplinary project at London's Natural History Museum that aims to make the Museum's collections available to arts and humanities academic researchers. It focuses on the potential use of the collection for visual artists. The work and personal experiences of the painter Franziska Schenk is explored in detail. Working closely with Museum staff, the artist accessed and successfully capitalised on the wide range of collections at her disposal. Her work provides a telling example of the artistic potential that the Natural History Museum collections have to offer as source material for interested researchers. As a case study, the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded art&science project 'Sea Change: Converting Nature's Fluctuating Colours to the Painter's Palette' (2007) drew on the Museum's actual iridescent specimens and on their historic representations housed in the extensive art collection. Ms Schenk and Professor Andrew Parker, the Museum's expert on iridescence, collaborated to recreate in painting the metallic-like iridescent colours of Nature. Until now, artists have tried in vain to capture these oscillating hues. However, recent advances in colour technology have led to the manufacture of novel nano-particles, which offer artists the wonderful (yet challenging) opportunity to mimetically depict iridescence. Based both on practice-based and scholarly research, the findings presented not only illuminate the subject of iridescence from a range of` diverse angles, but they also provide a vivid account of the crucial impact the Museum, its resources and staff, had and continue to have on the development of ideas and the generation of artistic work.