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There are few places in the North where the scale of the universe feels quite so immediate as it does at Jodrell Bank.
Set in the Cheshire countryside, home to the Grade I listed Lovell Telescope, this internationally significant site has spent decades listening to the cosmos. Since its foundation in 1945, Jodrell Bank has helped shape the story of radio astronomy, science communication and public curiosity in the UK. In 2019, its global importance was recognised when it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Now, Jodrell Bank Centre for Engagement is preparing to ask some of the biggest questions all over again - this time through the meeting point of art, science and imagination.
From 1 May to 20 September 2026, Jodrell Bank will host Cosmic Titans, a touring exhibition exploring the quantum universe. It marks the launch of the site’s new Curious Universe season, a programme of activities and events celebrating quantum science and the ways it is transforming our understanding of reality.
The exhibition arrives in the North for the first time following successful runs at Nottingham Lakeside Arts and Science Gallery London. Free with general admission, Cosmic Titans invites visitors to consider ideas that are often difficult to picture: the aftermath of the Big Bang, the nature of black holes, dark matter, gravitational waves and the hidden forces that shape the universe.
Rather than presenting these questions through science alone, the exhibition brings them into dialogue with contemporary art. Sculptures, photography and interactive works have been commissioned through the University of Nottingham’s ARTlab, where artists spent time working alongside scientists in research environments. The resulting pieces aim to make the invisible visible - or at least imaginable.
Works coming to Jodrell Bank include Conrad Shawcross RA’s The Blind Proliferation and Ringdown, Matthew Woodham’s Superdecision, Monica C. LoCascio and Daniela Brill Estrada’s Begriff des Körpers, Alistair McClymont’s Resin Sculpture from An Early Universe, photography by David Severn, and Robin Baumgarten’s Quantum Jungle, an addition to the original exhibition.
For Professor Tim O’Brien, Director of Jodrell Bank Centre for Engagement, the exhibition is a natural fit for a place built around curiosity. “Cosmic Titans brings people closer to some of the biggest questions we can ask about our Universe: from its origins to the hidden forces that shape our reality,” he says. “At a time when quantum science is transforming our understanding of the cosmos, Cosmic Titans combines art and science to make complex, often invisible phenomena accessible to the public.”
That sense of accessibility is central to the exhibition. Quantum science can be abstract, even disorientating. It deals with matter and energy at the smallest scales, yet its implications stretch outwards to the structure of the universe itself. By placing artists in conversation with scientists, Cosmic Titans offers another way in - not by simplifying the ideas, but by allowing audiences to encounter them through texture, light, image and form.
Dr Ulrike Kuchner, Exhibition Curator, co-founder of ARTlab and a researcher in astrophysics and art-science interdisciplinarity, describes art as “a uniquely powerful partner for science”, capable of connecting research with practice, aesthetics and culture. The exhibition, she explains, emerged from sustained collaboration and experimentation between artists and researchers, creating shared languages for communicating knowledge.
Professor Silke Weinfurtner, Professor of Applied Quantum Technology at The University of Manchester and co-founder of ARTlab, adds that artists can help scientists explore difficult ideas from fresh perspectives. “As scientists, we work with ideas that are often abstract and challenging to visualise,” she says. “Collaborating with artists allows us to explore these concepts from fresh perspectives and share them in imaginative, engaging ways.”
The visitor response from previous showings suggests that the approach works. Audiences have described the exhibition as “beautiful, mind-boggling and very thought provoking”, “bonkers but brilliant”, and a place where the links between solid science and art become unusually clear.
At Jodrell Bank, that meeting of disciplines feels especially resonant. The site has always combined advanced research with public wonder. Its great telescope is both an instrument and an icon: a working piece of scientific infrastructure and a powerful symbol of humanity’s urge to look beyond itself.
With Cosmic Titans, Jodrell Bank is not simply hosting an exhibition about the universe. It is extending its own long conversation with the cosmos — one that invites visitors to stand beneath the Lovell Telescope, step inside the quantum imagination, and consider the hidden realities that may underpin everything we see.
Cosmic Titans runs at Jodrell Bank, Cheshire, from 1 May to 20 September 2026. The exhibition is free with general admission.
Header Image: The Blind Proliferation by Conrad Shawcross - credit University of Nottingham, Nick Dunmur
