This November, Bannister Gallery presents The Galileo Project. We reached out to Director Victoria Gao to talk more about this exciting exhibition.
Can you tell us a bit about the exhibition that will featured on November Gallery Night's 6:30pm tour?
Gao: In The Galileo Project, Nancy Bockbrader, Doug Bosch, and Richard Whitten have created a dialogue across media, time, and imagination—one that links contemporary art to centuries-old scientific inquiry. Drawing from the history and the visual language of the scientific instruments housed in the Museo Galileo, each artist interprets and reimagines these objects through the lens of their own practice. Bosch’s sculptures, tactile and purposefully imperfect, suggest objects suspended between function and fiction. Whitten’s intricate paintings create a catalogue of invented devices, each that inhabits a specific if unidentifiable place. Bockbrader’s hand-bound catalogue, with essays by curator Dr. Victoria Gao and Dr. Natasha Seaman, provides a satisfyingly unique companion for the exhibition.
Richard Whitten, Frontispiece I: Johannes Motter Astronomical Ring, 2025, oil on wood panel, 15.5" x 12.25"
What do you hope Gallery Night visitors will take away after experiencing this exhibition?
Gao: I hope that Gallery Night visitors feel transported into new worlds with this exhibition. Richard Whitten’s paintings invite the viewers to “play” the machines that he has created with their minds. Similarly, Doug Bosch’s sculptures feel like three-dimensional puzzles that are up to the viewer to put back together with their own imagination.
What prompted you to explore the blurring of boundaries between art, science, and history?
Gao: This exhibition began out of a shared common interest that Whitten and Bosch had in historic scientific instruments, specifically from the Museo Galileo. They invited Nancy Bockbrader to create a hand-bound exhibition catalogue to further expand the analog nature of these instruments. Having a science background myself (an undergraduate degree in physics) and a career working in the art world, I was also immediately drawn to the connections created by the artworks in this exhibition.
Artists Doug Bosch (above left) and Richard Whitten (above right)