22.10.2021 – 16.01.2022

“The Creation” (fol. 3r), in: Hartmann Schedel, Weltchronik (Liber Chronicarum), Nürnberg, 1493, Private Collection.

In autumn 2021, the university and the city of Leuven have put together a large-scale cultural event based on the theme of the Big Bang and the creation of the universe entitled Big Bang 2021. This city-wide festival focused on the fascination Humankind holds for the cosmos, and the place we, as thinking and creative human beings, occupy within the universe.

The choice of this theme is not haphazard: The Big Bang theory was formulated in 1931 by professor Georges Lemaître (1894-1966) at the university of Leuven. The remembrance of this key date in scientific history is the motivation behind a prestigious exhibition that will be set up at museum M Leuven. The theme of the exhibition is the imagining of the universe in the visual arts and the processes of thinking from Antiquity up to the nineteenth century. Its focus is on the European Middle Ages and the early modern period.

Curator: prof. dr. Jan Van der Stock and the Illuminare team