Fire and Gold: The Art of Alchemy (1450-1850)
This permanent exhibition features paintings and rare books exploring the quest to uncover nature’s “secrets” and unlock the potential of matter.
Opens October 7, 2026
Fisher Gallery
Centuries ago, alchemists sought to uncover nature’s “secrets” and unlock the hidden potential of matter. They pursued healing elixirs, searched for the legendary philosophers’ stone, and tested the possibility that one substance could be transformed into another—pursuing, most famously, the elusive transformation of lead into gold.
The Science History Institute’s new permanent exhibition, Fire and Gold: The Art of Alchemy (1450-1850), draws on the museum and library’s extensive collection of European paintings and rare books to transport visitors back to a time when chemistry was chymistry, when alchemists explored the transformation of matter through experimentation, secrecy, and coded language. Fire and Gold takes visitors from underground mines into cluttered workshops and fiery laboratories, where they experimented with metals and minerals, controlled heat, and developed processes such as distillation.
For the first time, visitors can explore a permanent exhibition in the newly reopened Fisher Gallery, an intimate space overlooking the Institute’s Othmer Library of Chemical History, a by-appointment-only research library with six miles of shelves devoted to the history of the chemical and life sciences.
Featured Works
Fire and Gold features oil paintings from both the Fisher Collection (gifted by the estate of Fisher Scientific International founder Chester G. Fisher, namesake of the Fisher Gallery) and the Eddleman Collection (gifted by Spectrum Laboratories founder and philanthropist Roy Eddleman), making the Science History Institute home to one of the largest collections of alchemical art in the world.
Often called “The Great Work,” alchemy gave way to modern chemistry. Centuries of alchemical experimentation expanded our understanding of matter, materials, and medicine—and helped lay the groundwork for the science that followed.
Fire and Gold was curated by University of Hong Kong art history lecturer Elisabeth Berry Drago, the Science History Institute’s former director of museum education and Distillations podcast cohost.
Opening Celebration
Save the date for An Alchemical Affair: A ‘Fire and Gold’ Opening Celebration taking place on Wednesday, October 7, 2026, from 5pm to 8pm at 315 Chestnut Street in Old City Philadelphia. Registration opens soon for this free event, which will feature a curator’s talk, interactive alchemy-themed activities, light refreshments, and much more.
Support
Fire and Gold: The Art of Alchemy (1450–1850) has been made possible by the generous support of Barry Arkles and Janine Black.
Featured image: Detail of a colorized woodcut from De re metallica, or On the Nature of Metals [Minerals], by Georg Agricola, 1556.
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The Fisher Gallery is named for Fisher Scientific International founder Chester G. Fisher (1881–1965), whose estate gifted the Science History Institute with oil paintings, woodcuts, glassware, works on paper, scientific equipment, and other objects. Several of the donated paintings are featured in Fire and Gold: The Art of Alchemy (1450–1850).