On Beauty

Emily Eveleth and David Tester

Thursday, October 8, 2015, 7-8 pm

Broad Institute, Auditorium, 415 Main Street, Cambridge, MA
Presented as part of HUBweek

The notion of beauty invokes awe, pleasure, aspiration; we are taken outside of ourselves and returned. Painter Emily Eveleth and Senior Software Engineer at Google and Visiting Researcher at the Broad Institute David Tester, explored the idea of beauty and how it resonates and overlaps in both of their worlds. As a way to focus this huge topic they looked at aspects of truth, pattern and ambiguity. In her book Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty Harvard professor, Nancy Etcoff posits this: "Beauty is neither a cultural construction, an invention of the fashion industry, nor a backlash against feminism, but instead is in our biology. It's an essential and ineradicable part of human nature that is revered and ferociously pursued in nearly every civilization--and for good reason. Those features to which we are most attracted are often signals of fertility and fecundity." The Broad Institute generously hosted this program, and it was a fascinating evening.  

Emily Eveleth graduated from Smith College and studied at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.  Her works are included the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and PAFA in Philadelphia, among others; in 2010 a 12 year survey of paintings was presented at the Smith College Museum of Art. Her paintings span the boundaries between portrait, landscape, and object of projected desire and she is continues to explore the paradox of the oxymoron through paint. Eveleth is represented by Danese/Corey, New York and the Miller Yezerski Gallery in Boston.

David Tester is a Visiting Researcher at the Broad Institute and a Senior Software Engineer at Google Genomics. He currently works on bringing very large scale computing to bear on problems in science and healthcare. David has a background in Artificial Intelligence, Formal Logic and a Ph.D. from Oxford University.

Image: Emily Eveleth, Regency, Oil on canvas, 73 x 71 inches, 2012.