National Glass Centre

The title of this exhibition refers to Ernst Haeckel’s popular 19th century scientific book Art Forms from Nature, first published in ten installments between 1899-1904 to interest the general public in naturalism. Within it, the secrets and beauty of some of the creatures that live in our oceans are revealed to a broader audience, beyond the field of science, for the first time ever.

'Art Forms from the Ocean' draws together a number of works, displaying contemporary artworks and objects of antiquity side-by-side that show the breadth of our continuing fascination with oceanography and how we observe and interpret the natural world. Science came to be integral to popular culture during the Victorian era. Debates about evolution brought science to the fore and our culture was affected, and is still shaped, by the developing potent social force of science during the 19th century.