In early April, three events took place at University of Stuttgart and Schauwerk Sindelfingen, jointly launching the project "Art and Quantum: IYQ in Art Museums" for a broad audience. The project is part of UNESCO's International Year of Quantum Science and Technology 2025 (IYQ), and it aims at bringing together the field of “quantum”, i.e. quantum physics and quantum technologies, and the field of “art”, thus creating an interdisciplinary perspective for various events that could take place e.g. in art museums.
On April 2nd, Schauwerk Sindelfingen impressively demonstrated how an IYQ event can unfold in an art museum. Klaus von Klitzing, winner of the 1985 Nobel prize in physics, gave a public evening lecture entitled "Light, Quanta & Max Planck". He explained key elements of quantum physics, from Max Planck's theory of blackbody radiaton to applications in solar cells and current research on quantum computing. The evening lecture took place during a special opening of the museum and was followed by short guided tours of the present Schauwerk exhibition of light art, "Neon, LED & Co."
On April 3, a symposium took place at the University of Stuttgart, where twenty experts from various fields discussed the interfaces between quantum physics and technologies, contemporary art, and art education in museums. The ideas developed there support future activities of the "Art and Quantum" project. The venue for this symposium, the ZAQuant building at University of Stuttgart, also offered the opportunity to visit several physics laboratories and thus gain insight into world-class quantum technology research.
The crowning finale of the "Art and Quantum" kick-off was the public evening lecture on April 3rd by Franz Gießibl. The renowned physicist, professor at University of Regensburg, was the first to achieve subatomic resolution using atomic force microscopy, and he reported, among other things, how this breakthrough triggered his exchange with Gerhard Richter: the painter, recognized worldwide as one of the most important artists of our time, had become aware of Gießibl's results, and thus a decades-long exchange on various physical questions developed.
The lecture audience were able to learn more about "Art and Quantum" topics through numerous posters outside the lecture hall and use a microscope to view "world's smallest Kandinsky," which was structured into a silicon wafer by Stuttgart nano-optics researchers in 2023. Marc Scheffler, a physicist at the University of Stuttgart and initiator of the "Art and Quantum" project, summarizes its two-day kickoff as follows: "We have seen that this unusual interdisciplinary topic can attract broad interest both in an art museum and at a university. We are now looking forward to the subsequent IYQ events of this project at other locations in Germany."