About

Venus Conversations 2024-2034 is a series of dialogues and art projects launching from the planet Venus to explore cultural, scientific and artistic forcefields. 

 Our twin planet, Venus is the most visible celestial object in the night sky after the Sun and Moon. Venus empowers women and the female in all its spectrums. It embraces bodies of all kinds, Earthly and celestial, and across countless cultures and times. And yet it has been marginalized in cultural imagination and space science for almost half a century.

Detail from “Venus does not exist” a textile and NASA Magellan radar data project by artist Michèle Boulogne, 2021-ongoing.

Venus Conversations 2024-2034 turns our attention to Venus once again to embrace its pivotal place in human cultural history and to prepare for a new era of discovery as seven or more scientific missions will return to our neighbouring planet in the next decade.

This ten-year project is co-organized by three women: artist Lily Hibberd, art critic and independent curator Annick Bureaud and art-science curator and academic Claudia Schnugg. Together, we will ignite a wide range of Venus art+science projects, working in three-year cycles. Starting from 2025, artists, curators, scientists, and other collaborators will be supported to develop conversations around Venus in different locations worldwide. Projects will be developed and communicated through a variety of media and formats.

Lead image credit: digital montage by Lily Hibberd: processed image from NASA's Mariner 10 spacecraft, 1974, credit JPL/NASA, 1974 (public domain), and a photograph taken from the Soviet  Venera-13 lander, 1982 (public domain).

Outcomes include...

• Creative research visits that pair artists and curators with planetary or social scientists to work in artist studios, research laboratories, observatories, or archives and museums to animate dialogue and collaboration around Venus.

• Events such as public meetings and conversations, performances, and pop-up exhibitions will be organized at satellite spaces.

• Publications and social media will be generated, including regular podcast series, YouTube videos, blog entries, and newsletters, while in print format there will be articles, essays, and an eventual book.

Building on these activities we will develop a major exhibition to be timed with the ESA-NASA EnVision mission launch in 2031/32. Our exhibition will act as a twin probe, travelling for two years in parallel with EnVision's spacecraft toward Venus.

Project Launch

23 November 2024

Dana Research Centre and Library, Science Museum, London

Speakers included the project co-organizers, Science Museum curators Laura Joy Pieters and Rebecca Mellor. Venus scientists Dr Philippa Mason (UK) and Dr Thomas Widemann (FR) both of whom are representing the ESA-NASA EnVision Venus mission launching in 2031. 

Other invited conversationalists included socio-legal property and space law scholar Saskia Vermeylen (UK), and international artists Michèle Boulogne (FR/NL), Oscar Santillán (ECU/NL), and Imperial College Venus radar specialist Gerard Gallardo i Peres.

The first in a decade of transnational conversations, the launch featured an open dialogue between the audience and our speakers.

A documentary exhibition accompanied the event, with reproductions of work by seven artists, items from the Science Museum collection, and current scientific research, all inspired by Venus. Artists included were Michèle Boulogne, Anna Hoetjes, Lily Hibberd, Oscar Santillán, Andrey Shental, Matt Smith, and Shireen Taweel.

In addition to these fascinating happenings, the Dana Centre Library hosted a special display of books related to Venus from the Science Museum collection selected by Lily Hibberd and beautifully arranged by Dana librarian Isabel Evans.

Documentary exhibition 2024

This slideshow presents some of the reproductions of contemporary artworks, Science Museum collections and scientific research presented as a documentary exhibition at the Science Museum’s Dana Research Centre on 23 November 2024, all inspired by Venus. Click on images for captions

Funders and supporters

Venus Conversations 2024-2034 is enormously grateful for the support it has already received. The project arises from Lily Hibberd’s two year artistic project titled "Venus – new perspectives towards 2031”. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principle arts investment and advisory body. The Venus Conversations is hosted by Lily Hibberd on her website under the auspices of this initial project. The Science Museum launch is supported by Imperial College, London, and the UK Space Agency.

Thank you enormously to everyone who generously gave to our Kickstarter campaign for the Venus Conversations 2024-2034 launch!

Special acknowlegements go to our major sponsors Din Heagney, Sarah Kenderdine, Roger Malina, and Morning Star Founding Supporter Karen O’Flaherty.

Contact

VenusConversations@pm.me