After 45 years of science-based art, Esther Klein Gallery winds down – WHYY

Hybrid: an Interspecies Opera is having its premiere at the Esther Klein Gallery. The approximately 20-minute film is screening on a loop inside a darkened room built into the lobby of 3600 Market. It can be viewed anytime during gallery hours, which are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays.

It is one part of a small retrospective of Dewey-Hagborgs work, Closer Than Your Family, which also includes a love virus that can replicate the hormonal chemicals generated by being in love (an actual engineered virus, but never tested on a person), and 3D printings of peoples faces based on the genetic information in their DNA.Watsons ghost is one of three works by Heather Dewey-Hagborg that make up the last exhibit at the Esther Klein Gallery. It shows different interpretations of how James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, might look based on DNA alone. (Emma Lee/WHYY)

Closer Than Your Family is the final exhibition in 3600 Market. After the show closes Dec. 16, the Esther Klein Gallery will be gone.

Since 1976, the gallery, named after its original benefactor and founding director Esther Klein, has driven the art programs of the University City Science Center, a hub for science innovation and entrepreneurship spread across several buildings. The gallery moved into 3600 Market shortly after it was built in 1989.

Curator Angela McQuillan said the art program of the Science Center will re-establish itself in 2024 under a different, still undetermined name, across the street at 3675 Market Street, a newer building finished in 2018 with a larger ground-floor community space called the Quorum.The Quorum on Market Street will be the new home of the Esther Klein Gallery, although it will no longer be known by that name. The science-based art gallery will expand its mission to address health issues. (Emma Lee/WHYY)

They have this big lounge in there, and they have a coffee shop and free wi-fi and everything, McQuillan said. People have migrated over there and less people come through this space. We want to capitalize on the amount of people going through that space, to have more people view the work.Angela McQuillan is curator of the Esther Klein Gallery in University City. (Emma Lee/WHYY)

The Esther Klein Gallery has championed science-based art for more than 45 years. In its early days, the gallery featured artwork that tended to revolve around robotics and technology. When McQuillan became curator nine years ago, she steered the gallery toward art involving biology and bioethics.

The Science Center also has an artist residency program, putting artists into the laboratories of its tenant scientists to inspire new work. That is where Dewey-Hagborg developed the love virus in 2018 with scientists in the lab of Integral Molecular.

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After 45 years of science-based art, Esther Klein Gallery winds down - WHYY