Venus Conversations

2024-2034

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).

Conversation with Venus

10 January 2026

OpenFactory, Centquatre, Paris

Conversation with Venus, 2026. Photomontage by Lily Hibberd, with images of Venus and NASA’s Magellan probe, from NASA, public domain.

The Venus Conversations 2024–2034 project comprises a series of dialogues and artistic projects that bring together scientific, anthropological, cultural, and artistic perspectives related to the planet Venus.

This special workshop for Centquatre’s 9th OpenFactory centres on the performance Conversation with Venus, a dialogue between our twin planet and a scientist.

Artistic and scientific presentations deepen the audience’s engagement with the project. Finally, participants will be invited to create their own vision of Venus as they exchange with the Venus Conversations team.

Register here (limited places)

2pm-3pm

Saturday 10 January 2026

See the full program on the Centquatre website

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).

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

Model of Mariner 10 spacecraft, launched 1973. Science Museum collection. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Anna Hoejtes, VEGA, 2020. Installation, Silver PVC balloon, brass, acrylic, aluminium, prisms, sound, 340 × 340 × 550 cm. Photos Daniel Zachrisson/Lunds Kontshall. Image courtesy of the artist

Orrery by Thomas Wright, 1735-1745. Science Museum collection. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Viewing the transit of Venus, print, 1793. Robert Sayer and Co. Science Museum collection. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Matt Smith 'Losing Venus "Cook Service"' ceramics, 2020. Image courtesy of the artist

Eau-de-nil Champion 'Venus' four-valve radio, Champion Electric Corporation Ltd, 1947. Science Museum collection. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Replica of one of the telescopes made by Galileo Galilei, which he used to observe the phases of Venus, facsimile made in 1923. Science Museum collection. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Michèle Boulogne, 'Venus does not exist' detail from installation of textiles, approx. 1.5 x 2m, 2021. Image courtesy of the artist

BepiColombo Structural Thermal full-scale Model, European Space Agency. BepiColombo made a fly-by of Venus. Science Museum collection. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Copy of Venus figurine, plaster, c.1935. 'La Manche de Poignard', found at grotte du Pape, Brassempouy, France. Original in musee nationale St Germain-en-Laye. Copy in Science Museum collection, on loan from Wellcome Trust collection, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Regulator clock by John Shelton with glazed mahogany case. One of five such clocks sent with Royal Society expeditions to observe the Transit of Venus on the 3rd June 1769. Science Museum collection. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Michèle Boulogne, 'Venus does not exist' research document from installation of textiles, 2021. Image courtesy of the artist

Twelve inch astronomical quadrant by John Bird, employed in the observations of the transit of Venus in 1769. Science Museum collection. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Andrey Shental, still from video 'Venera-13', 2019-24. Image courtesy of the artist

Pioneer Venus spacecraft (launched 1978) model, scale 1:48. Science Museum collection. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Cover of book 'Chasing Venus: Race to Measure the Heavens' by Andrea Wulf, Dana Centre Library, Science Museum collection. Photo Lily Hibberd

James Watt’s Great Workshop plaster cast of Venus, oval 7" x 5 1/4", 1790-1819. Science Museum collection. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Photograph by A.J. Strilign of observers of the Transit of Venus 1874 through a telescope, Station D Equatoreal 12, 1874 [Dec.8-9]. Station D: New Zealand, British expedition of 1874. Six-inch equatorial by Simms (Troughton & Simms). Science Museum collection. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Oscar Santillán 'PLANETARIUM' 2019. Ceramics made from clay which chemical composition replicates the surface soil of planet Venus, continuously pointing to the same planet. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo: Keita Otsuka

James Lovelock spiral notebook describing aeronomy figures comparing gas levels on Earth and Venus (early Gaia thinking?), 1960-75. Science Museum collection. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Shireen Taweel 'Calculations for Movement', hand pierced and engraved copper, silver, patina treatment, 2024. Image courtesy of the artist

Mechanical painting 'Venus and Adonis' by Francis Eginton, c.1778. Formerly inventoried as a sun picture by James Watt. Science Museum collection. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Refracting telescope with 5.9-inch aperture lens by Charles Tully, 1828. Purchased by the Royal Observatory, Greenwich for use in 1874 transit of Venus. Science Museum collection. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Lily Hibberd 'Venusian Rover' three-screen video installation 2022. Image courtesy the artist

Oscar Santillán 'SPACECRAFTS (VENUS)' 2018. Ceramics made from clay which chemical composition perfectly replicates the surface soil of planet Venus. Image courtesy of the artist

Lily Hibberd 'Didilia Corona' 2022. Venus feature named by the international Astronomical Union after an East Slavic deity contested by scholars. Image courtesy of the artist

Halley's comet and Venus, V.M. Slipher, Lowell Observatory, 1910, May 13. Glass plate photograph, exposure, 36min, 6 1/2" x 8 1/2". Science Museum collection. CC BY-NC-SA

French folding fan, 1811. A satirical scene of the 1811 comet and Venus as a pretend comet, may relate to Venus being mistaken for a comet. Science Museum collection. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Matt Smith 'Losing Venus "Cook Service"' ceramics, 2020. Image courtesy of the artist

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.

Contact

VenusConversations insert @pm.me