Here Comes the Sun: Solar Science and Spirituality

About the Program

Category: Arts, Culture and Historic Preservation (Best in Category)

Year: 2022

In March 2021, the San Bernardino County Museum opened “Here Comes the Sun: Solar Science and Spirituality.” The exhibit is a multidisciplinary story about Earth’s largest star. The exhibit presents the science of what we know about the origin of the Sun, and what role it plays in the natural world and in climate instability. The exhibit also draws on the museum’s vast historical, art, and anthropology collections, along with NASA’s Solarium video footage from the Solar Dynamic Observatory, to illustrate the Sun’s considerable presence in Southern California, deeply impacting and shaping regional culture, from indigenous communities to the present. The museum’s curators in history, anthropology, earth sciences, and integrated sciences all contributed knowledge and artifacts to tell this compelling story to help raise the science and cultural literacy of our county, with NASA’s Solarium video of footage from the Solar Dynamic Observatory as an interactive feature of the exhibit. The exhibit was at the San Bernardino County Museum from March 2021 - December 2021, and travels to the museum’s branch Victor Valley Museum in the summer of 2022.