Metamorphic Objects 

Ralph Helmick and Sara Schechner

Monday, November 10, 2014
6:00 - 7:00 pm

MIT Broad Institute, 7 Cambridge Center, Monadnock Room
Cambridge, MA 02142

According to curator and science historian Sara Schechner and artist Ralph Helmick respectively: science is messy and objects are multivalent. Schechner looks to scientific instruments to help us understand their stories and what they reveal about the science of their time. She does so in a disparate way, so that several points of view or narratives are possible. Helmick is interested in how referential forms and images can be broken down and subsequently re-formed anew. In his work, small three-dimensional components collectively create larger sculptures, forging a microcosmic/macrocosmic dynamic.

 Ralph Helmick and Sara Schechner engaged in a tag team conversation; they responded to each other as they presented their respective works, giving the audience the opportunity to experience their dialogue both visually and verbally.  This is a conversation is not to be missed.

Sara Schechner is the David P. Wheatland Curator of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, Harvard University.   She is a historian of science, specializing in material culture and the history of astronomy.  At Harvard, she is a member of the History of Science Department and has been on the faculty of the Museum Studies program. Schechner earned degrees in physics and the history and philosophy of science from Harvard and Cambridge. Before returning to Harvard's History of Science Department, she was chief curator at the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum in Chicago, and curated exhibits for the Smithsonian Institution, the American Astronomical Society, and the American Physical Society. Her books include Comets, Popular Culture, and the Birth of Modern Cosmology, Western Astrolabes, and Tangible Things (with Laurel Ulrich, Ivan Gaskell, and Sarah Carter, forthcoming 2014).  Recent research has focused on Renaissance mirrors and art; sundials, science and social change; and the impact of Revolutionary politics on astronomy in colonial America.

 Ralph Helmick is a internationally recognized sculptor of public art projects. He earned a BA in American Studies from the University of Michigan, attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, and received an MFA in Sculpture from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University. Early in his career, Helmick exhibited his work in numerous solo shows, as well as in group exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the Northeast.  Since committing himself to public art in the late 1980's, he has completed over forty major civic commissions across the U.S. Among his many awards is a National Endowment for the Arts / New England Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and numerous design honors for his public artwork. His commissions have been included in the Public Art Network's Annual Year in Review eight times. Current projects include his first international commissions.

Image: Ralph Helmick, Arbor, 2014 17' x 17' x 38' 8"site: John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, NY

media: timepieces, stainless steel cable, steel fabrication: Bob's Welding, Central Falls, RI
commissioned by the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York