This course focuses on the histories of relations between visual art and contemporary scientific method(s). It looks at why and how major socio-economic, cultural, and political changes associated with the history of "the West" (c. 1500 to the present), involved a preoccupation with vision and its effects. The course hones in on artists and "scientific observers", many of whom were directly involved in colonial and commercial projects. Topics of focus include: the uses of instruments (such as the microscope) for mediating sight and producing new knowledge about nature: the ordering, politics, and display of visual objects in collections, and more.