Permanent Exhibition: Making Modernity

Material world View a slide show Download wallpaper Send an e-card

Making Modernity is a major new exhibition that celebrates how science shapes the modern world. Ten years in the making, it opens this fall at the Chemical Heritage Foundation.

From chemistry’s origins to today, Making Modernity brings to life the unexpected beauty of science outside the lab. Visitors can trace scientific progress from the laboratory, to the factory, to their homes and learn how chemistry created and continues to improve the modern world.

Drawn from CHF’s world-class collections, the exhibition ranges from cosmetics to computers and includes scientific instruments and apparatus, rare books, fine art, and the personal papers of prominent scientists. Rotating exhibits examine science, art, and everyday life.

What’s in the picture?
This month we celebrate synthetics: manmade materials and manmade colors. Material science changed the look and feel of everyday life, bringing new colorfast dyes to fashion and new materials to home and industry.

• View the slide show to learn more about the colorful world of material chemistry, which produced timeless materials such as bakelite and nylon.
• View the previous month's kaleidoscope about fans, flags and funnels.

Read the curators’ blog
Putting together an exhibition like this requires a lot of work and thought by a team of dedicated people. Take a look at our curators’ blog, The Collective Voice, to find out what our curators are discovering and struggling with as they define, refine, and create Making Modernity.

Fall opening
Making Modernity will open in fall 2008. Admission is free and hours are 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Monday–Friday. There will be special evening hours on 3 October. For more information, contact museum@chemheritage.org.