Current Art Exhibits

As part of our mission to inspire people to embrace the importance and opportunity of the ocean, Bigelow Laboratory scientists regularly collaborate with artists to share their work with the public. The artistic process can provide the emotional translation needed to communicate the significance of science and spread the passion researchers feel for the natural world. Through our visiting artist-in-residence program and artistic collaborations, we help connect people with the heart of discovery and encourage them to care as much as we do, a vital component to building a society guided by science.

Bigelow Laboratory is currently under construction for a significant laboratory expansion. This page will be updated in 2025 with information on how to view the current art installations on our campus.

“Echoing Currents,” Daisy Braun

Plankton drift across time, carried by the current. These sculptures of reed, silk, and string float, out of scale, calling our attention to life’s ever-shifting web. Each part depends on all others, just as every present holds pieces of the past.

About the artist: Daisy Braun is an interdisciplinary artist from Peaks Island, Maine, whose work explores biological interconnection through drawing, sculpture, and performance. Braun draws inspiration from plankton, and their relationship with humans and time.

After earning a dual degree in Interdisciplinary Sculpture and Humanistic Studies from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Braun staged a week-long series of performances for Art Market Budapest. She has installed solo exhibitions at SPACE Gallery, the Maine Maritime Museum, and the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve. Braun volunteers with the Marine Invader Monitoring and Information Collaborative, and recently conducted a blue crab monitoring project on her local dock.

In the winter of 2023, Braun spent two weeks aboard the oceanic Research Vessel Sikuliaq, as the Hatfield Marine Science Center’s Artist at Sea resident, with a team studying zooplankton off the Oregon and Washington coasts.

Past Art Exhibits

"Majestic Fragility," Gulf of Maine EcoArts

"Majestic Fragility" celebrates ocean life and the scientific efforts to understand it. The two-story installation is the culmination of a three-year project focused on the Gulf of Maine and the human impacts that affect it. Inspired by the natural world under the waves, five artists worked with scientists to create a scene of the normally unseen.

The installation features a range of key endangered and threatened marine life from phytoplankton to birds in sculpture, textile art, and prints. At its center is a bone-white, 24-foot sculpture of a North Atlantic Right Whale, one of the most endangered species on the planet.

The work aims to capture the dynamic biodiversity of our oceans and inspire people to think about how they are connected to it. It was designed and built by the Gulf of Maine EcoArts, a collaborative of Maine artists who set out to create art inspired by, and to celebrate, the environment. It also involved a team of educators and students from more than 16 Maine schools – from middle school through college. The exhibit is slated to be on display until Fall 2022.

“Ultra-Fine Art of Coccolithophores,” William Balch

Coccolithophores are one of the most ubiquitous types of phytoplankton on the planet. They have a major impact on food webs and global carbon and chemical cycles. They also have a unique mechanism for protection. Coccolithophores cover themselves with minuscule limestone plates called coccoliths. The result is a beautiful mosaic in an extensive range of otherworldly shapes.

Senior Research Scientist Barney Balch celebrates the beauty and diversity of these amazing microalgae in “Ultra-Fine Art of Coccolithophores,” a freely available e-book, which can also be purchased in hard copy. The images were created from samples taken over decades of field research around the world. The book shares the wonder of these tiny organisms and the underlying science that connects them to our planet – and ourselves.