A Walk with Art at Salk

At the Salk Institute, there is an added emphasis on art in its scientific mission

WHEN THE WORLD’S most acclaimed scientist planned his research institute atop the bluffs overlooking the sea, he envisioned a world-class facility where science and the arts would go hand in hand. Dr. Jonas Salk, whose vaccine developed in the 1950s led to the eradication of polio, believed that if exceptional art were wedded to scientific discovery, then both fields—not to mention mankind—would benefit.

“Jonas believed art and science do best when they are together,” says Dr. Roger Guillemin, interim president of the Salk Institute. “In so many ways, especially in the way of thinking, one field and the other are very much the same.”

But he concedes science has always been the dominant mission and passion at the dramatically designed concrete citadel. Though Salk, who died in 1995, was a great patron of the arts, “Art was much less evident” under past presidents of the institute, Guillemin says.

That may be changing, however, thanks largely to the efforts of the erudite Guillemin, a 38-year veteran of the Salk Institute who won the 1977 Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology for discoveries that laid the foundation for brain-hormone research. “I thought one of the few things I could do in my few months as interim president was to bring back some tangible evidence of art,” Guillemin says in his rich French accent.

He began by arranging to display three sculptures at the Salk by his “very close friend,” the late Niki de Saint Phalle. (The French artist’s large, fanciful creations are publicly displayed in many places around the world, including her Queen Califia’s Magic Circle in Escondido’s Kit Carson Park.) “Everybody was delighted,” Guillemin says. “After that [exhibition ended], I asked Mel [Yoakum] if we could have some of Françoise Gilot’s paintings to display.”

Yoakum didn’t have much trouble convincing his friend of more than 20 years, and collaborator on four books about her art, to lend paintings to the institute. After all, Gilot—one of the more prolific and enduring artists of the post–World War II School of Paris movement—was married to Jonas Salk at the time of his death.

“They are called floating paintings; large banner-like paintings she made from 1980 to 1986,” says Yoakum, director of the F. Gilot Archives and a consultant to the Salk Institute on cultural affairs. Gilot, who at 87 still paints daily, has had her work exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in La Jolla and at a gallery there in the years since she and Salk married in 1970, Yoakum says. But the nine enormous acrylic paintings, which hung this summer in the reception foyer of the subterranean Frederick de Hoffman Auditorium, marked the first time Gilot’s work has been exhibited at the Salk Institute.

“She was very excited and pleased about it,” says Yoakum. “It is putting her artwork in an environment where it forms a remarkable marriage.”

Long before Gilot married Salk, she lived and worked with Pablo Picasso. The great artist was 40 years her senior when their decade-long union began in 1946; together they had two children, Claude and Paloma. Gilot’s 1964 book, Life with Picasso, sold more than a million copies in its first year and was translated into more than a dozen languages.

The marriage of Gilot and Salk seemed perfectly natural. According to Yoakum, “Françoise knew well the science of art, and Jonas understood the art of science.”

Her paintings, which helped form the union of science and art that was Salk’s great desire for his institute, were replaced in mid-October by an exhibit of works by Ellen Salk. The La Jolla painter, who is married to Jonas Salk’s son, Dr. Peter Salk, says the works on display are from her Shaker Loops series, large (6 by 7 feet), colorful, oil-on-canvas abstracts whose “repetitive images of simple motion are reflective, in a sense, of human existence.”

More art exhibits are already forming on the horizon at the Salk. In his self-effacing manner, Roger Guillemin, 84, says: “Now that we have the art going, we’re going to keep it going—at least until the next president, a real president, comes in.”

And when will that be?

“The sooner the better!” Guillemin says with a hearty laugh.

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Though not generally available for public viewing, Ellen Salk’s exhibit from her Shaker Loop series of paintings can be seen through December by groups touring the Salk Institute. For information on arranging a tour or joining a scheduled tour, go to the institute’s Web site, salk.edu (click on ABOUT THE SALK INSTITUTE, then THE SALK CAMPUS), or call Salk Tours at 858-453-4100, ext. 1287.

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