The current Art@CMS exhibit appears at Fermilab’s art gallery through April 22. (Suburban Chronicle photo)

The CMS detector at the Large Hadron Collider, at CERN in Switzerland, is not only a remarkable scientific instrument; it is also a work of art.

It stands 50 feet tall, weighs 14,000 tons, and its thousands of wires and components work in concert to enable it to detect the smallest particles of matter in the tiniest fractions of a second. It is one of the two particle detectors that enabled the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.

This magnificent machine is the core of an art and science project that has inspired dozens of other works of art. Visitors can see many of those starting this month as the Fermilab Art Gallery hosts the Art@CMS exhibit.
First established last year by Michael Hoch, a physicist and photographer at CERN, the Art@CMS collection was created by professional artists working with CMS scientists.

More than 40,000 people have seen this exhibition in nine countries, including two prior installations in the United States. (Roughly 1,000 U.S. scientists contribute to the CMS experiment.)

The collection will be on display in the Fermilab gallery through April 22. The gallery is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

The eight artists featured in the exhibit work in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, collage and digital art.

All of them have been inspired by the wonders of science and are excited to communicate those wonders in new ways to new audiences, Hoch said.

But Art@CMS isn’t just an exhibition. Hoch’s aim is to create a dialogue with the public, using art as a medium.

The event will also include a series of workshops for students called Imagining Physics: Art Inspired by Fermilab, to be held at Water Street Studios in Batavia. Over five sessions, local high school students will tour the laboratory, learn about particle physics and be given space and materials to make their own art inspired by what they see.

The exhibit will also include new work from Lindsay Olson, Fermilab’s first artist-in-residence. Olson has spent months exploring Fermilab behind the scenes and has produced more than half a dozen pieces inspired by the work of the laboratory’s scientists. Olson’s art reaches for the same goals as the Art@CMS exhibit as a whole: to use an artistic language to bring science to those who might not otherwise experience it.

The Fermilab Art Gallery in Wilson Hall is open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The exhibit will be open during Fermilab’s Family Open House on Sunday, Feb. 8, from 1-5 p.m.
This workshop will culminate with an exhibit of the students’ work at Batavia’s Water Street Studios, 160 S. Water St., Batavia, through March 15.

The Studios is open Thursdays through Sundays from noon to 4 p.m.

“Having the Art@CMS pieces here at Fermilab is outstanding,” said Georgia Schwender, curator of the Fermilab Art Gallery. “But having the chance to connect the art and science of the CMS experiment with students outside the laboratory makes this event a true example of our mission.”