we're going to be taking a look at a new exhibition that has recently opened at

London's Victoria and Albert Museum

The exhibition is entitled Leonardo da Vinci, Experience, Experiment and

Design and to tell us about it I spoke to Thereza Wells who is one of the

curators of the exhibition, which means she is one of the people responsible for

organising it, setting it up and looking after it.

Throughout her career she's worked on a number of projects relating to

Leonardo and I first asked her to tell us a little bit about the man and why we

are still fascinated by him today.

Thereza Wells

Well Leonardo da Vinci was a man who lived during the Renaissance. He was born in 1452

and died in 1519. He's probably most well known as the painter of the Mona Lisa but he was

much more than that. He had a huge interest in the sciences, in maths, he studied anatomy,

human anatomy. He was an engineer, he was interested in making military tools for war and

he was a botanist. So he did all sorts of things and I think that's probably why there's this

enduring interest that every generation finds even today and every generation finds something

new to see, to learn about Leonardo.

Callum: Although Leonardo da Vinci is perhaps best known as the painter of the Mona

Lisa, he was far more than an artist. He was interested in, studied and

experimented in a wide range of sciences. It's this variety of interests that 

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Thereza believes captures the imagination even today. The exhibition is called

Experience, Experiment and Design and I went on to ask Thereza the

significance of those words as the title.

Thereza Wells

The words are very carefully chosen, the words of the title of the exhibition. What Leonardo

believed was that you couldn't understand the world, you could not gain knowledge of the

world without actually experiencing it and without actually experimenting with it. What I

mean to say is that he believed you could not understand the world just reading books. He did

not have a classical education himself. He obviously read books but I think that without

having a classical education, he was able to think outside the box. He believed very much that

you had to learn from the world by sort of experiencing it and that's what we're tackling in the

exhibition and he experienced that and he wrote about that in his many thousands of sheets of

notebooks and drawings that exist today and this exhibition is tackling how he thought on

paper and how he demonstrated his knowledge of the world on paper.

Callum: The words of the title of the exhibition relate very much to the way that

Leonardo worked, how he developed his understanding of the world. Not just

from reading books but through experiences and experiments. Thereza said he

was able to think out of the box. This is quite a modern expression which

means someone is able to have ideas that are not part of what is already known

– he or she can come up with creative, imaginative and new ideas to solve

problems.

Many of Leonardo's designs based on his ability to 'think out of the box' still

exist today and it is these that form an important part of the exhibition.

I went on to ask Thereza about the exhibition, what can people see there and is

it a practical 'hands-on' exhibition with exhibits people can touch and 

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experiment with themselves. What tool does she say the exhibition uses to

illustrate to the public the way that Leonardo thought?

Thereza Wells

The main core of the exhibition are 60 sheets, drawings and notebooks. They are definitely

not 'hands-on', it's really 'mind-on'. It's really about what was going on inside Leonardo's mind.

So it's a very, quite an intense exhibition but what we've done to sort of help people to

understand Leonardo's thoughts is to animate those drawings and to animate really the words

that he was writing. And these animations are suspended above the drawings so you will look

down at the drawing, you can read the label, you can examine the drawing and then above you,

you will look up and there will be a computer-generated animation of the drawing and

hopefully you say "a-ha, that's what he's talking about" because when you look at these

drawings you really believe that Leonardo must have wished that they could move. Many of

them are really full of motion and we hope that the animations will show that as well.

Callum: Well because the exhibits are Leonardo's original documents they are not really

hands-on! You can't touch them – but Thereza says they are 'mind on'. They

make you think. And to help visitors to the exhibition understand the drawings

there are computer-generated animations above the exhibits.

Leonardo da Vinci Experience, Experiment and Design is at London's Victoria

and Albert Museum from the 14th of September 2006 until the 7th of January

2007.

That's all from this edition of Entertainment.