We explore a facet of the scientific method of the Nobel Laureate Barbara McClintock through an artistic process. McClintock’s key scientific insights that she coined the ‘breakage-fusion-bridge cycle’, rest on her observation of maize kernel colors and forms together with the spatial arrangement of chromosomes. These intriguing studies motivated the art project ‘break-fusion-bridge-cycle’ to highlight the role of visual observation in discovery. Four different posters bear irregular diamond shapes with forms reminiscent of X-chromosome shapes and color patterns of the kernels McClintock studied and are inscribed with the words break, fusion, bridge, and cycle using a font type inspired by her drawings of chromosomes. As freely available posters, anyone can experiment with the spatial arrangement of shapes and colors, to reflect on one’s own ability to observe, to make connections and create new insights.

This paper builds on research around novelty and utility to argue that the value of arts thinking should be applied in the generation of scientific questions. Arts thinking is often playful, less goal oriented, and can lead to new modes of questioning. Scientific thinking often solves an existing question, serves a purpose in solving the question, and must be predictable. The “problem of the problem” is that asking creative questions is the linchpin of the quality of research across the sciences, just as the best of art “does things” that make us move and feel moved; yet we posit that it is useful to consider that what each teaches and celebrates typically tends more toward either utility or novelty as an entry point. A new theoretical basis is presented in identifying questions primarily based on novelty rather than utility, and a catalogue of methods proposed for creating questions to employ in education, practice, and project planning.