This watercolour illustrates different types of clouds. Until the 1800s, clouds were described in poetic terms rather than scientifically categorised. But this changed when amateur meteorologist Luke Howard proposed a classification in his Essay on the Modification of Clouds (1803). Howard distinguished three main cloud structures, to which he gave Latin names: the cirrus for ‘curl of hair’; the cumulus for ‘heap’; and the stratus for ‘layer’. This watercolour was reproduced in the 1865 edition of his book. With skies by Howard and a foreground by landscape artist Edward Kennion, or his son Charles John, it is an artistic representation of scientifically observed weather. Howard’s classification was widely adopted and is still used today.

During the First World War, conscription reduced the number of working men in the UK. Women took on jobs that had previously been done by men, including in this steel works depicted by Stanhope Forbes. During the war most metalworking production shifted to ammunition, which was in such high demand that Winston Churchill described the conflict as “a steel war”.
Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1919, the painting caused an uproar among visitors who were shocked to see women making weapons. The painting was commissioned by the works’ manager and every woman steelworker was given a framed reproduction of it as a memento. 65 years later, after the museum acquired the painting, a group of these women attended the work’s public unveiling.

In this painting, Edward Wadsworth depicts the sleek curves and abstract forms of a machine part: a ship’s propeller. As a modernist painter who had studied engineering draughtsmanship before joining the Vorticist movement and its celebration of industrial subjects, Wadsworth embraced the ‘machine aesthetic’. He painted this work when he was commissioned by the London Passenger Transport Board (today’s Transport for London) to design posters promoting the South Kensington Museums. With a predilection for marine subjects at the time, Wadsworth drew on the Science Museum’s own collections, looking to a wooden model of a ship’s propeller and delighting in its hydrodynamic forms.

70 years after Indian independence, the Science Museum hosted a season of exhibitions that celebrated India’s involvement in science. The museum commissioned self-described ‘Punjabi Liverpudlian’ artist Chila Burman to create works responding to objects and stories in the exhibition. Originally intended as a single large artwork, it became clear that the variety of Indian contributions to science demanded numerous responses.
This is one of the 29 works created by Burman. It depicts Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of learning and wisdom — and therefore science. She is also the goddess of art and music: two of her four arms play a veena, one of the oldest stringed instruments. In some Hindu traditions the supreme goddess Parvati manifests as other goddesses including Saraswati.

The Science Museum commissioned Eleanor Crook to create Santa Medicina for the 'Faith, Hope and Fear' gallery in 'Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries' which opened in 2019. Crook was invited to make a sculpture that could help us reflect on what constitutes a ‘good death’ today. Inspired by the monumental 16th-century bronze sculptures from Emperor Maximilian I’s tomb, Crook’s imagined patron saint of medicine is part saint, part surgeon. She holds a scalpel and scissors, while her stethoscope is also a rosary. Her skirt is richly decorated with votive amulets, chosen for their personal meaning by Crook’s friends, colleagues and museum staff. Under her protective skirts, in a glass reliquary, a vulnerable figure hovers between life and death.