Published on: 2026-10-08
Source: Moscow Government – Правительства Москвы –
An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.
This exhibition is based on stories of women scientists, but it is not like an exhibition in the usual sense. Here you will see the world through the “eyes” of a plant, ask questions to contemporary researchers, and feel like a deep-sea fish — and this is not a figurative comparison, but an immersive experience. Let’s go study the multisensory exhibits at Museum of Moscow.
The joy of discovery
Until the beginning of the 20th century, women engaged in science exclusively “without permission.” Systematic education was absent, but gender stereotypes and social condemnation were abundant. Even today, it is not easy to meet society’s demand: to be a well-groomed woman, a sufficiently good mother, and a successful scientist simultaneously.
Science is a path that does not imply easy earnings or quick results. How many studies, years spent on them, have never brought their authors recognition! And yet humanity continues to explore the world. Why is it so difficult and at the same time so attractive? Nikita Lavrenov, Candidate of Biological Sciences, Senior Researcher at the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, scientific curator of the exhibition “Women Scientists. Science Without Permission,” answers: “You know, science mostly consists of tedious routine. You spend months digging into data, setting up experiments, making mistakes, and redoing everything — sometimes several times. And the joy of discovery is that microsecond when scattered puzzle pieces suddenly click into place. It is this ‘click’ that we tried to capture in the interactive exhibits of the exhibition and convey to the viewer.”
The fight for a place in the audience. How Moscow women studied over 100 years ago
The joy of discovery is a true stimulus for scientists, and visitors should feel it too. How did the curators achieve this? For example, at one of the stands, guests are invited to count the spirals on the base of a pine cone, the number of drone ancestors, the keys in a piano octave… Nikita Lavrenov notes: “Every time a person performs different actions, they stubbornly obtain the same mystically converging numbers in their answers: 3, 5, 8, 13 — the Fibonacci numbers. It turns out that a fundamental mathematical law is before them. To see an elegant algorithm where just a second ago there was only a pine cone — that is the very joy of discovery that scientists seek daily. At least, that’s how we would like it to be.”
A person through the ‘eyes’ of plants and a swan’s monologue from a tire
The girl stood still by the display — she rearranges the chocolate pieces. After a couple of minutes, her face stretches in surprise, then a smile appears: she got an unexpected result in the calculations. This is one of many discoveries that can be made independently at the exhibition.
Among the most visited and discussed exhibits is the installation “Electric Sense.” It allows a person to personally understand how weakly electric fish perceive the world, living in murky water where vision is useless. Moving inside the installation, the visitor’s movements disturb a virtual electric field. When approaching another person, the invisible environment becomes clearer — this is accompanied by a sound signal.
“Every time I come to the exhibition, I see people enchantedly lingering inside the installation ‘Electric Feeling.’ This work does a remarkable thing: it allows you to hack the human mind’s umwelt (from the German word Umwelt — ‘surrounding world’, ‘environment’; the concept of subjective perception of the world by a living being) and feel what it is like to be a fish in murky water, perceiving the world through disturbances of electric fields. That is, you experience the existence in the skin of an animal with fundamentally different, non-human perceptual settings,” explains Nikita Lavrenov.
One can see oneself through the “eyes” of plants — this is a large-scale installation with video projections. It is also very popular and especially loved by children — like the computer game that sends an astronaut to different corners of the Universe.
Olga Vad, curator of the Art & Science direction and director of the Center for Art and Science at ITMO University, emphasizes: “We work with multisensory art. In our projects, we not only involve sound and visuals, but also appeal to various senses because a person is not limited to sight and hearing. They have touch, smell, they can feel changes in temperature. Through the emotional layer, multisensory experiences, and imagination, one can come much closer to understanding rather complex and comprehensive ideas.”
In addition to technological, spectacular exhibits, there are touching ones — for example, a swan made from a tire. It will tell how it ‘worked honestly’ all its ‘life’ on a passenger trolleybus route, and now it is more interested in the garden and summer house. And it will remind you of its ‘relatives’ made using recycled petroleum products — from lipstick to aspirin.
Scientist ladies
But where are the women scientists, for whom all this was initiated? Their stories are in every hall. Nine heroines — eight branches of science: physics, mathematics, chemistry, geology, microbiology, biology, climatology, astronomy. The immersive multisensory exhibits are not just for entertainment — each is connected to important scientific works and discoveries. For example, the olfactory installation about oil illustrates the research of Yulia Lermontova — the first Russian woman to receive a doctorate in chemistry (Göttingen, 1874).
In the 1880s, she studied the composition of Caucasian oil and developed an apparatus for its continuous distillation. Technical journals of that time spoke highly of it. Continuous distillation remains the basis of modern oil refining.
Zinaida Yermolyeva in her youth drank water containing cholera vibrios for scientific research, and later, during the Great Patriotic War, prevented a cholera epidemic in Stalingrad. In 1942, she created the first Soviet penicillin — crustosin, which saved many wounded soldiers and civilians. Nina Subbotina, deprived of hearing and speech in childhood, found a way to communicate with the world — through studying solar activity.
Curators have their favorites. Nikita Lavrenov is inspired by the story of zoo psychologist Nadezhda Ladygina-Kots, co-founder of the State Darwin Museum: “Her biography embodies a kind of absolute scientific punk reminiscent of the early 20th century. I am captivated by this transformation from an elegant lady of the Silver Age era into a researcher, a figure of truly global significance. And the story of her chimpanzee charge, Ioni, who in cold Moscow was picking at and eating lime from the walls of their apartment, is a profoundly heart-wrenching detail of the era. Nadezhda Ladygina-Kots expanded the boundaries of understanding animal and human psyche, and her stoicism and dedication to her work against all odds — for me personally, that is incredibly inspiring.”
The first female zoo psychologist. Meet Nadezhda Ladygina-Kots“Hand in hand, soul with soul.” We look at photos from the Kotsov family album
Science today — dialogue with scientists in the museum
Each hall includes a current section where contemporary researchers answer the same fundamental questions that preoccupied their predecessors. This section was created in cooperation with active scientists who have received grants from the Vladimir Potanin Foundation.
How do they see science? Nikita Lavrenov provides examples: “Two answers remain fresh in my memory. For instance, mathematician Dilara Salimyanova finds joy in her profession in breaking stereotypes (she became the first female lecturer in the mechanics department at Kazan Federal University) and in the fact that fundamental mathematics creates tools for problems that humanity has not even formulated yet. This strongly resonates with the ideas we started from when creating the exhibition. And Dana Mamiy, a graduate student of the biology faculty at Lomonosov Moscow State University, compares science to an exciting hunt: “You go into the unknown like an archaeologist, only instead of an excavation, you have a test tube with silt from the bottom of the Kara Sea, where organisms hide that no person on Earth has ever seen.” Beautiful, isn’t it!”
Exhibition audience
Producers Anastasia Koretskaya and Anna Kolchina believe that the project is intended for the widest audience — and has literally attracted every category of visitors. Indeed, at the exhibition there are students, adults, families with children of various ages.
But there is a group that the creators especially wanted to reach — high school students who are currently choosing a profession. According to the producers, these young people may see themselves in the future as scientists and consider continuing their education in natural and other sciences.
After the exhibition
After visiting the exhibition, it is hard to leave without new questions. That’s how science works: the deeper you explore, the more unknowns are revealed, and you can continue seeking answers. The exhibition is timed to coincide with the premiere of the series “Women Scientists” on online platforms — an excellent reason to further immerse yourself in women’s (and not only) science.
Exhibition “Lady Scientists. Science Without Permission”, on the one hand, reveals stories of scientific achievements, and on the other — immerses the viewer in a multisensory perception of the exhibits and literally involves them in participation — here you will calculate mathematical sequences, rearrange flasks, and send cosmonauts to a black hole. This is its main charm: adults and complex things — like the structure of oil and the mysteries of space — can be explored with childlike spontaneity and genuine joy.
Learn about performances, concerts, exhibitions, and other interesting events on the official “Mosbilet” channels on “Maks” and in Telegram.
Please note; This information is raw content obtained directly from the information source. It is an accurate report of what the source claims and does not necessarily reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.