Mathematics and Art in Creation

Introduction

Arts and mathematics strive to bring into our tangible world concepts and ideas that originate in the realm of thought. To achieve this, these disciplines employ means that may appear different. In both cases, however, this process of concretization does not occur spontaneously. The final result—whether a work of art or a theorem—often conceals the immense amount of work required to bring it into being, to transform an idea into a result or a work: creation is not instantaneous; it is a process.
This group exhibition highlights not only the creative process itself, but also the ways in which mathematical and artistic practices, through both their similarities and their differences, can enrich one another. Mathematicians work with artists, and some are artists themselves. They reveal the beauty of their discipline or use their works to communicate subtle ideas. Artists, in turn, find in mathematics a rich material to explore, creating works while investigating their own abstract systems.
Each work in this exhibition emphasises certain facets of the creative process, while also revealing the diverse ways in which mathematics and the arts support and challenge one another, both as disciplines of research and exploration and as social practices.

Exhibition conceived by the Institut Henri Poincaré, with the support of the IHP Endowment Fund, the Simons Foundation, and with the contribution of Céline Nadal (MuseoScience) for the production of the exhibition.

Year of creation

2026

Realisation

Production: Institut Henri Poincaré, with the support of IHP Endowment Fund and the Simons Foundation
Exhibition curators: Élodie Christophe (CNRS), Rémi Coulon (Université Bourgogne Europe and CNRS), Edmund Harriss (Université de l’Arkansas) and Glen Whitney (Studio Infinity)
Exhibition design: Céline Nadal (MuseoScience)

Public

Exhibition for all publics, recommended from 7 years old.

Informations

From 9 April to 25 July 2026
Espace Laurent Schwartz

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