Join art and science experts for a discussion of the ways in which advances in science have effected visual culture and our perceptions of self. A reception will follow the discussion. Participants include:
Paola Antonelli
Paola Antonelli is a curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. Her 2005 publication, Humble Masterpieces: Everyday Marvels of Design (Regan Books/Harper Collins) celebrates such indispensable wonders as the Post-It note, the Slinky, and the Tampax, and highlights how good design not only facilitates, but also emotionally enriches our daily routines. Antonelli’s goal is to promote a deeper understanding of architecture and design, until their positive influence on the world is fully acknowledged and exploited. She is currently trying to get a Boeing 747 into the collection of The MoMA. In 2006, she earned the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, Design Mind award.
Adam Bly
As CEO and Editor-in-Chief, Adam Bly guides Seed Media Group’s overall business and content strategy. While studying cell adhesion and cancer at Canada’s National Research Council, he identified a cultural shift in the making: science is transforming business, politics, the arts, and current affairs unlike ever before; today, science affects every person on the planet and science literacy is essential to modern society. Bly soon launched Seed Media Group, a science media and entertainment company that captures the ideas, issues, and icons shaping this global science culture. Bly has been named a “Young Leader of Tomorrow” (Maclean’s) and a “Media Executive to Watch” (Folio) for his pioneering vision and leadership at the helm of Seed Media Group.
Marc Pachter
Marc Pachter directs the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. Highlights of Pachter’s tenure at the National Portrait Gallery include the establishment of an awards program to honor service to and portrayal of the presidency; the creation of the first national portrait competition, to reinvigorate the tradition of portraying lives; and the reinstallation of the National Portrait Gallery through the restoration of its magnificent National Historic Landmark building. A cultural historian with a particular interest in biography, Pachter has interviewed distinguished Americans for a number of television programs and documentaries. He is an editor for the scholarly journal Biography, and has led a group of Washington-based biographers for 20 years.
Ariel Ruiz i Altaba
Knowledgeable in both the art and science fields, Ariel Ruiz i Altaba’s photographic work focuses on the intersection of biology and art, and on issues of identity. He is the Louis-Jeantet Professor of Stem Cell Research at the University of Geneva where his lab studies pattern formation, stem cells, brain development, and cancer. Ruiz i Altaba is currently curating an issue of the Spanish photography magazine Photovision on genes, identity, and image which features the work of 40 contemporary international photographers. He is the founding director of WetLab, a forum based in New York for the interchange of ideas between science and visual culture.
Ken Zaret
Developmental biologist Ken Zaret is the senior member and program leader for the Cell and Developmental Biology Program and the W.W. Smith Chair in Cancer Research at the Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia. The main focus of his current work is to understand how unspecialized progenitor and stem cells gain the competence to develop into different cell types. The mechanisms that underlie progenitor cell competence are fundamental to biology and to the potential to reprogram cells from one tissue type into another, at will. In 2006, Dr. Zaret received a 10 year MERIT award for funding from the National Institutes of Health.
This event is sponsored by Seed Media Group.
Image: Ariel Ruiz i Altaba, Homo sapiens, 2002-2004, archival pigment print
Click here to visit Ariel Ruiz i Altaba’s website
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