Engineering becomes art

Is it art or science? The Science Museum in London opens its first Picture
Gallery this week, with an exhibition of painting by Edna Lumb. In 1978
Lumb recorded in watercolour the conversion of the old Covent Garden market
into the London Transport Museum. She describes the building as ‘a grand
Victorian conservatory of glass and ironwork’. Lumb concentrates on industrial
scenes, finding inspiration in the patterns of spools and looms and the
movement of the machinery. The Picture Gallery also provides a home for
the museum’s existing art collection, which has not been displayed before.
Neil Cossons, director of the museum, dismisses the view that science and
art are separate: ‘Many scientific and industrial objects and feats of engineering
are works of art in their own right.’