Science Gallery is an international group of public science centres. Each gallery is operated byScience Gallery International in partnership with a major local academic institution. The first Science Gallery was opened in 2008 and housed in the Naughton Institute at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. Each gallery holds various artistic exhibitions and lectures with a view to science outreach and art-science collaborations. Unlike most science centres, they have no permanent collections, but rather a series of three to four temporary exhibitions each year.
Science Gallery Dublin is located within the Naughton Institute of Trinity College Dublin, which opened in early 2008. Prof. Mike Coey had championed the inclusion of gallery space in the Naughton Institute as a place to host exhibitions on science and talks. At its launch, Michael John Gorman was the gallery's director and Lynn Scarff was Education and Outreach manager. Scarff subsequently served as director from 2014 to 2018. Ann Mulrooney was then appointed as director in December 2018. The goal of the gallery is to host a programme of exhibitions, workshops, and events to engage people aged 15–25 with science and technology. Since its opening the Gallery has received funding and support from Google. In 2011 the gallery attracted 242,000 visitors, in 2014 that had risen to 400,000, and has seen a total of 1.8 million visitors from 2008 to 2014. The gallery was featured on a limited edition 2015 An Post stamp, which was part of a series along with the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition, celebrating recent Irish scientific achievements.
Exhibitions
The gallery hosts a number of exhibitions every year of varying length. Science Gallery Dublin's opening show was Lightwavein early 2008, and has since gone on to host forty other shows including shows the way we perceive - Seeing - and the future of work - Humans Need Not Apply. A component of a number of the exhibitions is the ability for the public to participate in ongoing research. Examples of this are the collection of data on the water consumption and showering habits of visitors to the Home/Sick exhibition WashLab.
Plans to open a permanent Science Gallery in London were first announced in 2013. Prior to this occasional Science Gallery exhibitions were held in temporary locations within Kings College. Science Gallery London opened in September 2018 in Boland House, Guy's Campus, King's College London as part of a £30M redevelopment of the original 18th century entrance to Guy’s Hospital.
The remit of the gallery has expanded over the years, with it now organising events such as TEDxDublin and Dublin Maker. Some of the exhibitions now travel internationally, with Illusion travelling to San Diego, and Biorhythm exhibited in Taiwan. Science Gallery Dublin is now part of an international group - the Global Science Gallery Network - administrated by Science Gallery International, which has the aim of setting up eight similar galleries across the world by 2020, supported by Google and the Wellcome Trust. The first of which will be in London in collaboration with King's College London, and is due to open in 2016. In 2014, the plans for a Science Gallery in Bangalore, India were announced, with the gallery planned to open in 2018, Science Gallery Melbourne with the University of Melbourne was announced in 2016. The SGI has an agreement to open a gallery with the City College of New York and in late 2016 announced Science Gallery Venice with Ca' Foscari in Venice.
