Conference: Exhibition of Traveling Gallery of Fluid Motion

About This Grant

The Traveling Gallery of Fluid Motion (TGFM) is an art exhibition inspired by fluid dynamics, a discipline that describes the flow of liquids and gases. The TFGM exhibition will be open to the public from October 2025 through February 2026 at the Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS), one of the most visited museums in the U.S., attracting nearly 2,000,000 visitors annually in Houston, TX. This unique exhibition draws from past submissions to the Gallery of Fluid Motion (GFM), a program founded in 1987 as part of the American Physical Society (APS) Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) conference, to highlight unique images and videos of the aesthetics and science of contemporary fluid dynamics. The TGFM expands this stimulating experience by teaming with curators and museums to expose science and art to the general public audience. For the third consecutive year, a selection of past GFM submissions have been transformed into an educational art exhibition designed to engage the senses and inspire a broader audience. The creators of the artworks on exhibit, ranging from photography and video to sculpture and sound, are created by scientists and artists and often combined with music. Their work enables us to “see the invisible” and understand the ever-moving elements surrounding and affecting us in fluid flows. Several of the artworks are specifically connected to the Houston region’s deep ties to the oil and energy sectors, highlighting fluid motion in contexts such as drilling, refining, and atmospheric flow. Gases and liquids are in constant motion, advancing in seemingly chaotic ways, yet the flow images and videos in this exhibition offer a closer look, revealing elegant and poetic patterns amidst atmospheric turbulence. The first TGFM exhibit, Chaosmosis: Assigning Rhythm to the Turbulent, premiered in 2023 at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in Washington, DC. The second exhibit, Spiraling Upwards, was showcased at The Leonardo Museum in Salt Lake City, UT, in 2024, and focused on the intersection of Leonardo da Vinci's studies on fluid dynamics and flight. The TGFM program will also include STEM enrichment events, panel discussions with artists and scientists, a website with extra educational resources such as articles, interviews, do it yourself (DIY) guidelines, and a HMNS reception at the conference in November 2025 to create opportunities for interdisciplinary dialogue and local community engagement. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.