Da Vinci Exhibition

　　Callum:  Hello, I'm Callum Robertson and this is Entertainment. In this programme

　　we're going to be taking a look at a new exhibition that has recently opened at

　　London's Victoria and Albert Museum

　　The exhibition is entitled Leonardo da Vinci, Experience, Experiment and

　　Design and to tell us about it I spoke 1 to Thereza Wells who is one of the

　　curators of the exhibition, which means she is one of the people responsible for

　　organising it, setting it up and looking after it.

　　Throughout her career she's worked on a number of projects relating to

　　Leonardo and I first asked her to tell us a little bit about the man and why we

　　are still fascinated by him today.

　　Thereza Wells

　　Well Leonardo da Vinci was a man who lived during the Renaissance 2. He was born in 1452

　　and died in 1519. He's probably most well known as the painter of the Mona Lisa but he was

　　much more than that. He had a huge interest in the sciences, in maths, he studied anatomy 3,

　　human anatomy. He was an engineer, he was interested in making military tools for war and

　　he was a botanist 4. So he did all sorts of things and I think that's probably why there's this

　　enduring interest that every generation finds even today and every generation finds something

　　new to see, to learn about Leonardo.

　　Callum:  Although Leonardo da Vinci is perhaps best known as the painter of the Mona

　　Lisa, he was far more than an artist. He was interested in, studied and

　　experimented in a wide range of sciences. It's this variety of interests that

　　Thereza believes captures the imagination even today. The exhibition is called

　　Experience, Experiment and Design and I went on to ask Thereza the

　　significance of those words as the title.

　　Thereza Wells

　　The words are very carefully chosen, the words of the title of the exhibition. What Leonardo

　　believed was that you couldn't understand the world, you could not gain knowledge of the

　　world without actually experiencing it and without actually experimenting with it. What I

　　mean to say is that he believed you could not understand the world just reading books. He did

　　not have a classical education himself. He obviously read books but I think that without

　　having a classical education, he was able to think outside the box. He believed very much that

　　you had to learn from the world by sort of experiencing it and that's what we're tackling in the

　　exhibition and he experienced that and he wrote about that in his many thousands of sheets of

　　notebooks and drawings that exist today and this exhibition is tackling how he thought on

　　paper and how he demonstrated his knowledge of the world on paper.

　　Callum:  The words of the title of the exhibition relate very much to the way that

　　Leonardo worked, how he developed his understanding of the world. Not just

　　from reading books but through experiences and experiments. Thereza said he

　　was able to think out of the box. This is quite a modern expression which

　　means someone is able to have ideas that are not part of what is already known

　　– he or she can come up with creative, imaginative and new ideas to solve

　　problems.

　　Many of Leonardo's designs based on his ability to 'think out of the box' still

　　exist today and it is these that form an important part of the exhibition.

　　I went on to ask Thereza about the exhibition, what can people see there and is

　　it a practical 'hands-on' exhibition with exhibits people can touch and

　　experiment with themselves. What tool does she say the exhibition uses to

　　illustrate 5 to the public the way that Leonardo thought?

　　Thereza Wells

　　The main core of the exhibition are 60 sheets, drawings and notebooks. They are definitely

　　not 'hands-on', it's really 'mind-on'. It's really about what was going on inside Leonardo's mind.

　　So it's a very, quite an intense exhibition but what we've done to sort of help people to

　　understand Leonardo's thoughts is to animate 6 those drawings and to animate really the words

　　that he was writing. And these animations 8 are suspended above the drawings so you will look

　　down at the drawing, you can read the label, you can examine the drawing and then above you,

　　you will look up and there will be a computer-generated animation 7 of the drawing and

　　hopefully you say ”a-ha, that's what he's talking about“ because when you look at these

　　drawings you really believe that Leonardo must have wished that they could move. Many of

　　them are really full of motion and we hope that the animations will show that as well.

　　Callum:  Well because the exhibits are Leonardo's original documents they are not really

　　hands-on! You can't touch them – but Thereza says they are 'mind on'. They

　　make you think. And to help visitors to the exhibition understand the drawings

　　there are computer-generated animations above the exhibits.

　　Leonardo da Vinci Experience, Experiment and Design is at London's Victoria

　　th

　　and Albert Museum from the 14  of September 2006 until the 7th of January

　　2007.

　　That's all from this edition of Entertainment.