"Plugged In": Caltech and the Norton Simon Museum Collaborate to Explore Art and Electricity

Caltech and the Norton Simon Museum recently came together over two days in October to host a symposium titled "Plugged In: Art and Electric Light." It brought together art historians, curators, conservators, science historians, and professors of cultural studies, material culture, and gender studies to reflect on the ways in which artists have manipulated or depicted artificial light since the widespread use of electric lighting began in the late 19th century. Papers covered a broad range of topics including paintings of artificial illumination, performance art of the 1960s and 1970s that incorporated lighting, and the minimalist "light sentences" of American artist Laddie John Dill, who is featured in the Norton Simon exhibition.

The Norton Simon Museum and Caltech have been musing over possible collaborations for several years. According to Brian Jacobson, professor of visual culture at Caltech, "We've had continuing conversations about ways to take advantage of the proximity of the two institutions."

Maggie Bell, associate curator at the Norton Simon, periodically combs through the museum's collection to brainstorm ideas for exhibitions. On one such occasion, Bell says, "I was just curious to know how many things in our collection light up. The answer is 11 of them, and they're all amazing! They're not just by known artists, but by people who shaped the history of modern art in America. And most of them didn't typically work in electric light."

Eager to bring these works to the public, Bell conceived of an exhibition to overlap with the Getty's PST Art: Art & Science Collide event, on display at more than 60 locations in Southern California from August 6, 2024 to February 23, 2025.

Bell reached out to Jacobson, asking if they might collaborate on using the exhibit to teach Caltech students in visual art classes or by mounting a symposium. As Jacobson remembers, "I immediately recognized how the themes of the exhibition would resonate with how we think about art and visual culture at Caltech. We know something at Caltech about plugging things in. We know something about turning things on and off."

They agreed on the idea of a symposium as a natural way to explore the long history of art and electric lighting and, as Jacobson notes, "how new technologies shape new aesthetic possibilities." The Plugged In exhibit itself is limited by the museum's holdings to a narrow six-year band between 1964 and 1970. "Looking at the exhibition, each artist used light and thought about light in ways that are particular to each of them," Bell says. "It just opened up this whole question of how artists use electric light more broadly that we wanted to explore with a community of scholars."

Senior leadership at the two institutions quickly signed on to the idea, with Caltech President Thomas F. Rosenbaum and Norton Simon President and CEO Walter Timoshuk agreeing to host a joint two-day academic conference.

The resulting symposium included papers on the depiction of artificial light in paintings of the "City of Light" (Paris) in the late 1800s during the Impressionist era, neon signage in Las Vegas in the 1950s, and how artificial lighting can be understood today as light pollution but also as a necessary tool in many artists' processes, whether or not the resulting artworks literally light up.

In his introduction to the symposium, Jacobson remarked that "art, science, and technology have been intimately related since the Enlightenment … the art of light involves experimentation, iteration, and fabrication. It requires technical expertise and sometimes industrial labor."

An important crossover between art and science, Bell says, is art conservation, a topic treated in several symposium papers. "When you talk about a work that's supposed to change, whose lighting is supposed to modulate over time, how do you recreate that?" Bell asks. "How do you understand what that change in time was supposed to look like?" Jacobson also sees a role for science consultants or scientifically trained art conservators: "I hope to make our students aware that art conservation could be a career path for them if they want to use the technical skills they have in the service of art."

The "Plugged In" symposium marked a first for the Norton Simon. "This level of international scholars coming to talk about new research in a field related to an exhibition is brand new for us," Bell says. "Seeing objects from our collection brought out of storage and used to generate new research is a really great feeling, and it was the collaboration with Caltech that made it possible."

Jacobson adds: "I really think that this is a great step in what could be a very fruitful collaboration between these two institutions."

The Plugged In exhibit will be on view at the Norton Simon Museum through February 17, 2025. Jacobson is also hosting a film series titled "Low Key: the Magic, Wonder and Horror of Light" at the museum in conjunction with the exhibit. The films will be shown each Friday in November and are free with museum admission.