Bracco Presents ''Visions of Science'' at the Bakken Library and Museum in Minneapolis.

Acist Medical Systems:

What:  Visions of Science, a photographic exhibit of M.I.T. scientific
       researcher Felice Frankel

Where: The Bakken Library and Museum, 3537 Zenith Avenue South,
       Minneapolis, Minnesota

When:  March 1 - April 21, 2006

Why:   An exhibition by science photographer Felice Frankel,
       previously shown in Italy at Genoa, Ferrara, Rome, Naples,
       Perugia, Milan, and at the New York University/Casa Italiana
       Zerilli-Marimo.

       The exhibition is made possible by Bracco, a worldwide leader
       in medical imaging, with the collaboration of the Consulate
       General of Italy in Chicago, the Italian Cultural Institute in
       Chicago and the Department of French and Italian at the
       University of Minnesota.

       Minneapolis is the location of the corporate headquarters,
       research laboratories and production facility of Acist Medical
       Systems, a Bracco Group company that manufactures and markets
       contrast media delivery systems.

Felice Frankel is a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The current exhibit displays 38 images resulting from collaborations in material science, nanoscience, biomaterials and chemistry.

Visions of Science

"It is possible to argue that science owns images: that the most interesting, fascinating and surprising images today are being made by scientists and engineers, and not by artists." Art Historian, James Elkins.

In the tradition of MIT's science photographer Harold Edgerton, Felice Frankel uses her work to demonstrate the variety and power of visual techniques found in the sciences today. The large-scale photographs in this exhibition, with vivid colors, forms, and details are accompanied by labels, often surprising, that describe how these beautiful images came into being.

"Like equations in mathematics and structural formula in chemistry", Frankel says, "these photographs are intended to communicate ideas. They are a visual representation of physical phenomena."

The exhibit is part of Frankel's larger project at MIT, the "Envisioning Science Project," that promotes a deeper understanding of the role of images in teaching and research. She sees her work as an expression of the scientific enterprise. "I do not consider myself an artist," she says "because an artist has a very personal and particular point of view, and communicates that part of herself that she wants the world to see. Scientific images can be very beautiful and probably artistic, but they are not art, and art is not science."

The Bakken Library and Museum shares Frankel's commitment to making the wonders of science accessible to the general public through its unique combination of the humanities and the sciences.

The Show's sponsor, Bracco Group, is a world leader in medical imaging. They are actively engaged in promoting culture, the arts and scientific research, and see an immediate affinity between Frankel's project and its own business. Bracco strives to reveal through diagnostic investigation what the naked eye cannot see, and to further develop cutting-edge technologies that expose "life from within." Felice Frankel's photographic exhibition offers an opportunity for the convergence and integration of science, culture, and the world around us.

The exhibit is open to the public from Tuesday - Saturday 10 am to 5 pm; and Thursdays 10 am to 8pm. Closed Major Holidays. For more information please visit www.thebakken.org

After Minneapolis, the exhibition will be shown at the Italian Cultural Institute in Chicago (500 N. Michigan Avenue - suite 1450) from April 27 until May 18, 2006.

About Felice Frankel:

A photographer specialising in scientific images, Felice Frankel is a researcher at the School of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and director of the Envisioning Science Project, as well as a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. From an overtly scientific background, following her degree in biology she worked as a laboratory assistant at Columbia University. She subsequently devoted her energies to photography and reached a certain level of fame as a landscape photographer: her activity in this field resulted in the publication of the volume Modern Landscape Architecture (Abbeville Press, New York 1991). She has also published "On the Surface of Things: Images of the Extraordinary in Science," 1997; and "Envisioning Science: The Design and Craft of the Science Image," 2002. In 2001 she organized an international conference at MIT that dealt with these issues under the title "Image and Meaning."

In 1991, at the age of 47, after winning a grant to Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, offering the chance to follow any study course, she rediscovered her original passion for science and married it to her success as a photographer.

She has received prizes and awards from the Guggehneim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in The Fine Arts, and the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation.

About Bracco:

The Bracco Group is the a world leader in medical imaging, with net sales of about 800 million euro, of which around 60% derive from international sales; it has operations in 115 countries and about 2,200 employees, of whom more than 400 work in R&D. Bracco invests around 15% of its turnover in R&D and has a portfolio of more than 1,500 patients worldwide.

Bracco has formed a high-level international research network, with three centers in Milan, Geneva, and Princeton that study and develop products for the newest diagnostic techniques, from X-rays and computerized axial tomography to magnetic resonance and echo contrast.

The Bracco Group deploys a global approach to diagnostic imaging, with an offer that integrates its core business based on contrast agents, field in which Bracco ranks among the world leaders, with contrast media delivery systems from Acist Medical Systems, a company based in Minneapolis and developing advanced contrast media injection systems, and Singapore-based Volume Interactions, the latter being a leading developer of advanced medical application software.