Michael Benson’s work focuses on the intersection of art and science. An artist, writer, and filmmaker, in the last decade Benson staged a series of increasingly large-scale shows of planetary landscape photography in the US and internationally. Benson takes raw data from planetary science archives and processes it, editing, compositing, and then “tiling” individual spacecraft frames, producing seamless large-format digital C prints of landscapes currently beyond direct human experience. His new show Otherworlds: Visions of our Solar System, featuring an original new hour-long ambient composition by Brian Eno titled Deep Space, opened in the Jerwood Gallery of the Natural History Museum in London on January 22nd, 2016. It then moved on to Vienna’s Natural History Museum for four months, and its next appearance will be at the Queensland Museum in Brisbane, Australia, opening March 4th, 2017. His photographic work is represented in the UK by Flowers Gallery. His largest show to date was a 7-room, 150-print retrospective staged at the Smithsonian Institution from 2010-2011 titled Beyond. Benson’s fifth book for Abrams, Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time, came out in October, 2014, and was a finalist for a Los Angles Times Book Award. He’s also an award-winning filmmaker, with work that straddles the line between fiction and documentary film practice. In Predictions of Fire and other films, staged studio scenes and even animated sequences alternate with straight documentary material. In 2008-10, Benson worked with director Terrence Malick to help produce space and cosmology sequences for Malick’s film Tree of Life, which drew in part from Benson’s book and exhibition projects. The film won the Palm d’Or at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. His work is also featured in Malick’s new film, Tree of Life. As a writer Benson has contributed feature articles to many magazines, frequently accompanied by his own photography. These have included The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Smithsonian, and Rolling Stone. He’s a regular contributor to The New York Times, and has also written for The Washington Post and other newspapers, including many Op-Ed pieces. Benson’s 2003 article for The New Yorker on NASA’s mission to Jupiter, “What Galileo Saw,” was anthologized in several places, including The Best of Best American Science Writing (HarperCollins, April 2010). Benson is currently working on a work of narrative nonfiction for Simon & Schuster titled Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece. Following this book, which is pegged to the 50th anniversary of the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Benson will use a scanning electron microscope at CUNY’s Advanced Science Research Facility to focus on natural design at sub-millimeter scales for a project titled Nanocosmos. He’s a Fellow of the New York Institute of the Humanities, and Advocate for Curiosity at the Weizmann Institute, and a Visiting Scholar at the MIT Media Lab.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
Atmospheres, 11 framed prints, Flowers Gallery, 21 Cork Street, London W1S 3LZ, UK, 11/9/2016-12/3/2016
Otherworlds, 77 framed prints, Natural History Museum Vienna, Burgring 7, 1010 Wien, Austria, 5/31/2016-9/25/2016
Otherworlds, 77 framed prints, Jerwood Gallery, Natural History Museum, London, Cromwell Rd, London SW7 5BD, United Kingdom, 1/22/2016-5/15/2016
Carina Nebula, single large print in dedicated gallery, Worcester Art Museum, 55 Salisbury Street, Worcester, Massachusetts, 12/1/2013-6/22/2014
Planetfall, 56 framed prints, AAAS Art Gallery, 12th and H Streets NW, Washington DC, 3/27/2013-6/28/2013
Planetfall, 18 framed prints, Hasted-Kraeutler Gallery, 537 West 24th Street, NYC, 1/24/2013-3/9/2013
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 59 framed prints in 40 frames, Stauth Memorial Museum, Montezuma, Kansas, 10/8/2011 – 12/4/2011
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 55 duratrans prints mounted in light boxes, Dulles Airport Gateway Gallery, 9/30/2010 – 3/31/2011
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 59 framed prints, College of Central Florida, The Webber Center Gallery, Ocala, Florida, 7/23/2011 – 9/18/2011
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 59 framed prints, The Petaluma Museum, Petaluma, California, 5/7/2011- 7/4/2011
Jenseit des Blauen Planeten (Beyond the Blue Planet), ), 42 framed prints, Astronomie Wien – Planetarium, Kuffner- und Urania Sternwarte, Vienna, Austria, 5/6/2011 – 6/6/2011
Beyond, 15 framed prints, Hasted-Kraeutler Gallery, 537 West 24th Street, NYC, 2/3/2011-3/19/2011
Beyond: Visions of Our Solar System. 148 framed prints in seven rooms, Art Gallery, The Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC, 5/26/2010 – 5/2/2011
Da draussen – Planetenaufnahmen aus dem All (Beyond – Planet Recordings from Space), Natur-Musuem Luzern (Natural History Museum of Luzern), 42 framed prints, Switzerland, 11/12/2010 – 5/1/2011
Images from Beyond: Visions of Our Solar System. 22 framed photographs, Long View Gallery, Washington DC, 9/16/10-10/24/2010
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes. 59 framed prints, California University of Pennsylvania, California, PA, 12/4/2010 – 4/17/2011
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes. 59 framed prints, Daura Gallery, Lynchburg College, Lynchburg, VA, 9/18/2010-11/14/2010
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes. 59 framed prints, Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, 4/17/2010 – 8/29/2010
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes. 59 framed prints, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, Santa Barbara, CA, 11/13/2009 – 3/28/2010
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 42 framed prints, Palazzo della Borza, Genoa, Italy, 10/23/2009 – 11/1/2009
Planeter i sikte (Planets in Sight), 118 framed prints, NRM Naturhistorisk Riksmuseet (Swedish Museum of Natural History), Stockholm, Sweden, 6/16/2009 – 11/29/2009
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 42 framed prints, Fondazione Cini, Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, Italy, 9/23/2009 – 9/28/2009
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 59 framed prints, Duluth Art Institute, Duluth, MN, 6/13/2009-8/9/2009
Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes, 20 framed prints, Minorite Monastery of St. Francis, Piran, Slovenia, 6/16/2009 – 11/29/2009
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 59 framed prints, Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts, 3/28/2009-5/24/2009
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 59 framed prints, Museum of Arts and Science, Macon, Georgia, 1/10/2009- 3/8/2009
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 59 framed prints, The ETSU Natural History Museum, Gray, Tennessee,10/25/2008-12/21/2008
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 59 framed prints, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Cleveland, Ohio, 8/9/2008-10/5/2008
Visions of the Interplanetary Probes, 90 framed prints, Gliptoteka Museum, Zagreb, Croatia, 7/16/2008 – 8/21/2008
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 59 framed prints, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Tucson, Arizona, 5/24/2008 – 7/20/2008
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 59 framed prints, Monmouth Museum, Lincroft, New Jersey, 3/8/08 – 5/4/08
Beyond: Voyages to Venus, Mars, Europa & Io, 49 framed prints, American Museum of Natural History, NYC, 4/14/07 – 4/14/08
Selected Group Shows
Lunar Attraction, Peabody Essex Museum, East India Square, 161 Essex Street, Salem, MA 01970-3783 USA, 10/15/2016-11/4/2016
Touch the Sky, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Bates College, 124 Raymond Ave., Poughkeepsie, NY, 4/29/16-8/21/16
Starstruck: The Fine Art of Astrophotography, Bates College Museum of Art, Olin Arts Center, Lewiston, Maine, 6/8/2012-12/15/2012
PATHS: Charting, Navigating, & Bridging, Simons Center Art Gallery, SUNY Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY, 5/6/2013-6/28/2013
Skydreamers, The Autry Museum, Los Angeles, CA, 4/29/2011-8/21/2011
Public Collections
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts
Corporate Collections
PharmaSwiss SA, Zug, Switzerland
Gallery Representation
Michael Benson’s photographic work is represented in the United Kingdom by Flowers Gallery, London