Art Center’s Williamson Gallery is continuing its series of explorations into the intersecting domains of art, science, technology and design with side-by-side exhibitions exploring the interplay between the technologies used to fabricate objects and the thought-processes used to conceive them. The Curious World of Patent Models and The Future of Objects open Thursday, June 3, will be on display through August 15.

The relationship between technology and its influence over the process of conceptualizing objects, inventions and innovations is referenced overtly in The Curious World of Patent Models, an exhibit of more than 50 scale models representing ideas submitted for United States Patent protection between 1800 and 1880. A concurrent exhibit, The Future of Objects, displays new digital-age fabrication and prototyping techniques in which complex forms are created by 3D printers. As the exhibit reveals, technologies related to those used daily in households and offices to print 2D information on flat pieces of paper are now being used to create freestanding 3D objects using a variety of solid materials.

“As we celebrate Art Center’s 80th anniversary, it’s fitting to showcase advanced computer modeling and 3D printing techniques that will very soon become such a big part of the planet’s visual culture,” says Gallery Director Stephen Nowlin. “Exhibiting 19th-century fabrication alongside 21st-century technology opens an entirely new conversation about what is coming in the future, and where it came from.”

The Curious World of Patent Models and The Future of Objects On Exhibit
Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery
Hillside Campus
June 4—August 15
Opening Reception: June 3, 7- 9 pm