Intellectual Capital explores advances of science in the 16th and 17th centuries
| Published: 10/03/2006 |
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While the vast majority of MSOE's Man at Work art collection depicts physical labor, a new exhibition titled Intellectual Capital displays the brainier side of the 16th and 17th centuries. Intellectual Capital opens for Gallery Night & Day, Oct. 20-21 in the Walter Schroeder Library, 500 E. Kilbourn Ave. The exhibition will be open Friday, 5 - 9 p.m. and Saturday, noon - 2 p.m. The exhibition will then be on display through January 15, 2007.
Depicting men working at less physically taxing trades, such as notary, scholar, scientist, physician, tax collector and money lender, the exhibition sheds a sometimes skeptical or humorous light on these figures of importance.
Astronomers also appear in the exhibition as the 16th and 17th centuries proved important for astronomy with discoveries by Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. Used as a navigation tool, astronomy aided this period of discovery as unknown territories were explored.
Man at Work: The Eckhart G. Grohmann Collection at Milwaukee School of Engineering is a collection of European and American paintings, prints, drawings and sculptures depicting various forms of work - from manpower and horsepower to water, steam and electrical power - is the world's most comprehensive collection of its kind and numbers more than 600 pieces made between the 17th and 20th centuries. It was gifted to MSOE in 2001 from the collection of Dr. Eckhart Grohmann, a Milwaukee businessman, collector and MSOE Regent, as a teaching tool and as an object lesson in the integration of aesthetics into a curriculum that increasingly includes the humanities.