I live in a neighborhood of artists: painters, potters, and sculptors, all highly motivated to interpret the world around them through their crafts. I witness the same environment here at UNC, where scholars and students alike strive to understand humanity through creative expression. The Arts Everywhere initiative, founded by the departing Emil Kang, has illustrated how the arts are a fundamental part of our campus life and our work. A collaboration between many departments, units, and organizations, the goal of Arts Everywhere is to inspire original ideas and provoke change.
Though our subjects, methods, and audiences are different, our goals as researchers are similar to artists’, and often merge. In his 1906 Nobel Prize-winning work on brain structure, Santiago Ramón y Cajal discovered that individual cells (neurons) comprise the brain. His findings challenged the belief of the day that the brain was a continuous, interconnected structure. Today’s research on the brain and brain-related diseases, such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, are based on Cajal’s findings. Fundamental to his work was his artistic training and more than 3,000 original drawings of the brain. During last Spring semester, UNC’s Ackland Art Museum hosted 80 of his pieces in the exhibit “The Beautiful Brain: The Drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal.”
In another example, the North Carolina Museum of Art recently showcased images created by UNC neuroscientists entitled “The Art of Science and Innovation.” The exhibit illustrated how experimentally produced images are used to understand structures within biological systems. UNC System President Bill Roper said of the works that, “The images in the exhibition showcase the unexpected beauty found in the life-changing medical and scientific research that happens every day at UNC.” Emily Kotecki, manager of interpretation at the museum, added: “Integrating the arts helps collapse the walls of traditional subject matter and makes all learners more aware of the interdisciplinary world they inhabit […] to make connections, foster creative and critical thinking, and develop awareness of multiple perspectives.”
In 2015, Frank Wilczek, a Nobel Prize recipient, published the highly acclaimed book, “A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature’s Deep Design.” I highly recommend it. In the book, he connects the arts and sciences as disciplines that both “strive for a deeper order of beauty in nature […] the hallmarks of which are harmony, balance, proportion, and economy.” Wilczek explores the idea that beauty and art are intertwined with the scientific understanding of life by asking, “Does the universe embody beautiful ideas?”
This philosophy that art is science and science is art is deeply embedded in Carolina’s Blueprint for Next: of and for the people, innovation made fundamental. Art and science bring us together for the shared purpose of better understanding the world around us.