During the 20th century, many people were forced to flee from their country, running away from intransigent governments repression.
Years later, some of these refugees developed their scientific work successfully, even receiving international awards as the Nobel Price, making great contributions to humanity.
Today, Rafael Alberti's words become more present than ever. Today, history repeats itself or continues. Thousands of human beings travel our planet fleeing wars, death, looking for a way to survive.
The Ciencia de acogida exhibition, pretends to reveal the mass exoduses drama. Human beings playing their lives and losing it in many cases, whole nations cultural wealth stripped away by wars. A Cultural heritage, on the other hand, acquired by countries who give shelter to these lost souls.
Through a historical journey from Spanish Civil War to Second World War, while visitors are invited to think about current times, we will reveal all those scientific men and women who were refugees/sheltered/displaced, along with their contributions to Universal Science and, finally, to Society.
The exhibition
The exhibition is divided in two main modules. On the first one we are in Spain, where visitor will meet scientists who had to leave this country after the 1936 fratricidal war outbreak. Through a graphical proposal inspired by both faction’s propaganda posters, we will meet the great figures of the Silver Age of Spanish Science: Severo Ochoa, Dorotea Barnés, Amparo Poch and Gascon, Blas Cabrera, Enrique Moles or Pilar de Madariaga Rojo.
On the second module, we will find leading scientists who found theirselves involved in WWII. In this historical chapter, due to Third Reich anti-Semitic laws, many intellectuals —hundreds of scientific included— were forced to leave Germany. Artistic proposal is based on visual artists work from the Bauhaus school and the surrealist movement, which put in context knowledge fields from scientists who fled Europe, many of them leading researchers (and many Nobel Prizes) like Rita Levi-Montalcini, Albert Einstein, Lise Meitner, Enrico Fermí, Emilio Segré o Max Born.
Exhibition closes, in conclusion, with an artistic work dedicated to current age where emotions arise as protagonists. A piece designed to make viewer think.