HomeTravel & LeisureCulture › "Da Vinci The Genius" Exhibition Comes to Arizona Science Center
 
 
 

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Coming to the Arizona Science Center in Downtown Phoenix on Sunday, Feb. 10 through June 9, is the most comprehensive exhibition on Leonardo da Vinci to tour the world — Da Vinci The Genius, created by Australia’s Grande Exhibitions, with the assistance of the Anthropos Foundation, Italy, and Pascal Cotte, France.

The exhibition brings to life the full scope of Da Vinci’s brilliance as an inventor, artist, scientist, anatomist, engineer, architect, sculptor and philosopher, bringing 10 themed areas that blend science, engineering, art and culture, including the world exclusive 25 Secrets of Mona Lisa—a groundbreaking analysis of Da Vinci’s, and quite possibly the Western world’s, most famous painting.

“We want people to gain an appreciation and see the genius of a man 200 years ago and see how much he changed the world today,” Grande Exhibition manager Rob Kirk says. Da Vinci is famously known for his paintings of Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, but Kirk wants to express the whole of the Da Vinci scope and show just how many accomplishments this one man has made.

Though Da Vinci was a genius who developed extremely complicated concepts and ideas, Kirk says the exhibit is pitched in a language to suit all ages and is not over complicated. The exhibit is aimed to gain all audience a comprehensive awareness and gratuitous respect towards Da Vinci and includes an interactive physics section for children to understand basic principles in physics.

Da Vinci The Genius offers various areas within the exhibition and provides interesting facts and information to each of these areas. Some of these areas include Da Vinci’s Codices, little notebooks he kept that foster all his ideas and work; “The Father of Flight,” which gives background to his groundbreaking science of flight; and his machine inventions, civil machines, hydraulics and aquatic machines, the Virtuvian Man, anatomical drawings, musical and time-keeping instruments, optics, military engineering, and renaissance art. Was it mentioned that he did a lot in his life?

But perhaps the most unique thing about the exhibit is the exclusive look into 25 discovered secrets in the Mona Lisa, founded by French scientific engineer, Pascal Cotte, which took two years of analysis and three hours of taking high-resolution (240 million pixels) photos of the original painting outside her enclosure. In the exhibit, hallways and rooms are filled with giant replicas of Mona Lisa, one that goes from floor to ceiling, some that vary in different shading colors, and some that have close-ups of its landscape, face, body, arms, smile and eyes, giving guests the chance to be the few who actually get too see a more real resemblance of what the Mona Lisa looked like when it was first painted.

Admission for the general public is $26.95 for adults, $20 for children (3-17), and $22.95 for seniors.

http://www.azscience.org