From Our Forefathers: Climate Crisis in Chemistry History

We’ve teamed up with artist Aislinn Pentecost-Farren and ArtPhilly’s What Now: 2026 festival to look at our museum through a new lens.

Aislinn Pentecost-Farren introduces participants to a selection of discoveries behind iconic 20th-century inventions. She re-narrates the Science History Institute’s permanent collection to reveal the start of the climate crisis within advances in modern chemistry. From a nylon stocking to a lightbulb, Pentecost-Farren illuminates our understanding of climate catastrophe by unearthing its origins.

This event is free, but registration is required. Other dates: May 28 and June 17.

About From Our Forefathers

From Our Forefathers is a series of tours through iconic Philadelphia museums to tell the history of the climate crisis. Pentecost-Farren guides participants through America’s outsized contribution to climate change through a sequence of encounters with objects that were present at the origins of the crisis, from Indigenous dispossession through the Industrial Revolution. She re-narrates existing exhibitions at the Science History Institute, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Independence Seaport Museum to reveal the unseen origins of climate change hidden within accepted historical narratives. From a stove made by enslaved ironworkers, to an oil painting of a steam turbine, Pentecost-Farren attempts to understand catastrophe by starting at the beginning.

“From Our Forefathers: Climate Crisis in Chemistry History” is commissioned by ArtPhilly as part of its What Now: 2026 festival and presented in collaboration with the Science History Institute.

About the Artist

Aislinn Pentecost-Farren is an artist and public historian. She reframes museum collections, historic buildings, and overlooked landscapes as starting points for sculpture, writing, and public interventions. Her practice infiltrates existing systems of cultural reproduction to reveal new narratives within established histories and to explore hindsight, responsibility, and time. Pentecost-Farren is also the co-curator of our current Seeing Carbon ExhibitLab display.