Physical Spells: The Wor(l)d in the Atom

MSU Museum Opens Exhibition Featuring MSUFCU Arts Power Up Artist-in-Residence

The Michigan State University (MSU) Museum is pleased to announce the opening of Physical Spells: The Wor(l)d in the Atom an exhibition inspired by Violeta López López’s MSUFCU Arts Power Up Artist-in-Residence. The exhibition will be on view at the MSU Museum’s temporary space at 311 Abbot in downtown East Lansing. A public opening reception will take place on Thursday, September 4, 2025, from 4:00 – 6:00 PM.

“Physical Spells is an exciting example of what can happen when experimentation and collaboration are at the center of the creative process,” said Mark Sullivan, Creative Director of the MSU Museum’s CoLab Studio. “The exhibition invites visitors to engage with science and art by exploring connections between language structures and phenomena in physics, using interactive play, movement, and metaphor. Just the kind of interdisciplinary exploration the MSU Museum aims to catalyze.”

Artist Violeta López López spent three months in residence at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), a world-unique rare isotope research facility. From this immersive experience, López López developed Physical Spells: The Wor(l)d in the Atom, a hands-on exhibition that turns physics and language into a playful, interactive experience. Similar to a video game, the exhibition encourages curiosity, movement, and teamwork to unlock new layers of meaning. Visitors explore surprising connections between atoms and words, quarks and sentences, and discover how science and storytelling can come together in unexpected ways.

“Physical Spells looks at physics through the lens of linguistics to discover unexpected links between them,” said López López. The exhibition aims to create poetic bridges that bring together different disciplines, opening the doors to new ways of understanding them. Each artwork invites visitors to engage with this research by playing, interacting and immersing themselves in the shared magic at the core of language and physics.”

The exhibition opens with a public reception on September 4, and will remain on view through December 6, 2025. Free and open to all.

For more information and to reserve your spot, please visit the MSU Museum’s website at museum.msu.edu

The MSUFCU Arts Power Up Artist-in-Residency program is an initiative designed to foster collaboration, exploration, and innovation at the intersection of art, science, and technology. The program offers a supportive environment for artists to develop new works while engaging with the dynamic communities across Michigan State University’s campus.

The inaugural call for applications was issued in August 2023, inviting visual artists from diverse backgrounds to immerse themselves in the FRIB laboratory environment. This year’s theme centered on nuclear astrophysics, encouraging artists to create interactive visual artworks that explore the societal and philosophical dimensions of this critical area of research.
This visionary program is supported by the Michigan State University Federal Credit Union (MSUFCU) and coordinated by the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB); MSU Museum; STEAMpower Project, Michigan State University’s art, science, and culture collaborative; and Arts MSU.