Women in Art and Science, The Criticality of HopE
In partnership with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
November 10, 1-2pm
(previously scheduled for March 19, 2020)
The theme of the conversation was inspired by Bina Venkataraman’s recent book The Optimist’s Telescope; Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age. The speakers explored the criticality of hope and optimism in our culture, and how practitioners in both the arts and sciences rely on hope in order to be forward-thinking especially in this current moment. Free and open to the public.
Speakers:
Journalist and policy expert Bina Venkataraman, institute member of the Broad Institute and assistant professor of pediatric oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School Cigall Kadoch, multimedia artist Michelle Samour and multimedia artist Maggie Stark.
Bina Venkataraman is an American journalist, author, and policy expert. She is currently the Editorial Page Editor of The Boston Globe and a fellow at New America. Since 2011, she has taught in the program on science, technology, and society at MIT. She is the author of The Optimist’s Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age (Riverhead, 2019). As a former adviser in the Obama White House, she helped communities and businesses prepare for climate change, and she learned firsthand why people don’t think ahead—and what can be done to change that. In The Optimist’s Telescope, she draws from stories she has reported around the world and new research in biology, psychology, and economics to explain how we can make decisions that benefit us over time.
Michelle Samour is a multi-media artist whose installations, drawings and handmade paperworks explore the intersections between science, technology and the natural world. Samour has exhibited at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Strasbourg, Kohler Art Center, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, and the Fitchburg Art Museum. She has received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council including a 2014 Fellowship in Drawing, a Society of Arts and Crafts New England Artist Award, and grants from the Cushman Family Fund, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Daynard Fund to study historic papermaking in France and Japan. Her work is included in public and private collections including the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, International Paper Company, and Meditech Corporation.
Maggie Stark is a multi-media artist, whose videos, photographs and sculptures explore the nature of time within real and imagined spaces. She has exhibited her work throughout the region, including solo exhibitions at the Kayafas and HallSpace Galleries in Boston, the Burrows Rotunda at Dartmouth College, and McIninch Art Gallery, Southern New Hampshire University. She was an affiliate of the Boston Sculptors Gallery for nine years and has held residencies at the Corning Museum of Glass, Millay Colony and Vermont Studio Center. Recent awards include a Cultural Fellowship from the Goethe Institute, Berlin and an Artist Residency Fellowship at the Haslla Art World Museum, South Korea.
Cigall Kadoch is an institute member of the Broad Institute and an assistant professor of pediatric oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. Kadoch studies chromatin regulation, with a strong focus on the structure and function of the mammalian SWI/SNF or BAF family of chromatin remodeling complexes in human cancer. Her work has been centered on mechanistically interrogating rare, molecularly well-defined cancers, to understand the role these complexes play in promoting a wide range of more common cancer types.
Concurrent exhibit: Worlds of Marvel
Extended March 9 – December 1, 2020
Artists Michelle Samour and Maggie Stark create realms of wonder. They are masters of their respective craft, and use their materials to engage the viewer in ideas about permanence and transience, and the intersections between science, technology and the natural world.
Image: Maggie Stark, TimeLock, Video installation still, 2016