A new periodical table art is located outside Abott 101. Photo by Nicholas Nelson/The Dakota Student.

The UND Undergraduate Chemistry Club, along with the chemistry and art and design departments, held a dedication ceremony for a periodic table mural completed outside Abbot Hall’s largest lecture room on Friday.

The dedication ceremony took place after the Annual Homecoming Lecture. The Homecoming lecturer this year was UND alumnus James Morley, general manager of Chemistry, Manufacturing and Control Center at Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd. His lecture was titled “Concrete Chemistry: Opportunities for an Organic Chemist.”

The lecture took place in Abbot 101. Refreshments were served after the dedication ceremony that featured a periodic table of cookies.

“I think it’s really great that the college is trying to incorporate more art into the campus,” UND sophomore Samantha Evans said. “It feels like creative expression is something that we don’t always have a lot of here, so it’s nice that the campus is attempting to add more of it to our lives.”

The mural is comprised of 118 ceramic tiles that display an artistic representation of the periodic table of elements. The mural combines scientific and pop culture perspectives.

The images were printed using an MZ ceramics pigment printing system. The tiles were then fired at the ceramics facilities of the Department of Art and Design. The mural includes the contributions of 57 students, faculty, university and community members. It is supported by contributions from the UND Chemistry Department and its alumni, the UND department of art and design and the Myers Foundation.

Wesley Smith, Department of Art and Design, and Julie Abrahamson, Department of Chemistry, served as co-curators for the project.

The mural’s location was chosen to encourage student gatherings between classes, promote conversation and discovery and stimulate interest in the language of chemistry, the elements and their symbols in an interdisciplinary way.

The Periodic Table of Elements Mural is part of the UND Art Collections’ The Living Museum, which uses art for education, research and cultural enrichment. The Living Museum displays art in several places throughout campus. The Living Museum expands art beyond the confining walls of a traditional museum building and allows us to teach and research what art is and is not.

“I really like the pictures that were chosen for the different tiles,” UND freshman Jake Stephenson said. “It actually makes it interesting to look at the periodic table. I would like to see more stuff like this around campus.”

Katie Haines is a staff writer for The Dakota Student. She can be reached at [email protected].