Across our campus community, who among us does not seek and create? Seek insights; interrogate existing structures and systems; search for cures, solutions, justice. Create models and prototypes; generate ideas; envision beyond what is already given. We often refer to such activities as “research” but are we not also describing the practice of art? As a follow-up to our pioneering 2023 Research and the Artistic (Im)pulse event, in April 2025 we are hosting two panel symposia that will situate art, scholarship, science, and engineering as miscible practices rather than divisions of discipline. The through-lines for these panels will be Architecture on April 11, and Reframing on April 25. Please join us to learn about the transformative work of our invited speakers and their imbricate aims, values, and methods.
Research and the Artistic Impulse: Reframing
Friday, April 25, 2-5:45PM
Bechtel Conference Center, 616 Jane Stanford Way (parking & directions here)
Reserve your free ticket:
(requested but not required)
Photo by Mike Vitelli
Gala Porras-Kim
"Expanded Data Fields"
Presenting projects that consider how institutions shape inherited forms and codes and conversely, how objects also shape and redefine the contexts in which they are placed. The works are about the institutional frameworks that define, legitimize and preserve cultural objects. Considering how historical material is represented and exhibited, they focus on how institutional methods and ideology is used to analyze and ultimately control narratives and access to knowledge.
Natalie Gosnell
"Art + Science: The Responsibility to Imagine"
What is possible when artists and scientists truly co-create together? When we step beyond our disciplinary silos, what new questions can we ask? What new answers will we discover? I will discuss the expansive world made available by moving not just into a place of cross-disciplinary work, but into a place of undisciplined exploration.
Gerardo Aldana
“Divination and Science in Mayan Hieroglyphic Texts”
In this talk, we’ll begin with a review of some well-known examples of Postclassic Mayan astronomy. The goal here is to shift the focus from the scientific acumen apparent in these cases to an exploration of the textual descriptions accompanying the astronomical tables. In doing so, we’ll encounter much greater resonance with the divinatory contexts of the rest of the manuscript in which they are found. In turn, we’ll see a protracted historical tradition of “astronomical divination,” connected to earlier, Classic-period mythological inscriptions, speaking to a scientific interest in dialogue with nature as opposed to mastery over it.
530 National Treasures, 2023
Photo: Yang Ian
Gala Porras-Kim (b. 1984, Bogotá; lives and works in Los Angeles and London) has had solo exhibitions at Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland currently on view; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; Storefront for Art and Architecture, NY in 2024; Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul; the Fowler Museum, Los Angeles; Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Sevilla; Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; in 2023; Gasworks, London, Amant Foundation, Brooklyn, and Kadist in 2022, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 2019 among others. Selected group exhibitions include the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Korea Art Prize at National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, 12th Liverpool Biennial in 2023; 34th Bienal de São Paulo, 13th Gwangju Biennale in 2021; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2021, 2017); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2021, 2019); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles(2019, 2016); PinchukArtCentre, Kiev (2019); Whitney Biennial (2019, 2017). She was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (2019), the artist-in-residence at the Getty Research Institute (2020-22). Her works are part of public collections at the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, DePaul Art Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, Seoul Museum of Art, Korea, FRAC Pays de la Loire, FR, and Tate Modern, UK.
The Gift, 2023
Fine Arts Center at Colorado College
Dr. Natalie Gosnell is an observational astrophysicist, artist, and Associate Professor of Physics at Colorado College. In her work as a teacher-scholar, she is committed to building bridges across disciplinary boundaries, particularly in the world of art-science. Her astrophysics research focuses on binary stars that have been fundamentally changed by the presence of their companion. Her co-created artistic work, The Gift, has been presented by Lincoln Center of the Performing Arts, the Fine Arts Center of Colorado Springs at Colorado College, Stanford University, and the Los Angeles Music Center as part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time series. Dr. Gosnell is the recipient of a Cottrell Scholar Award from the Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement and was recognized with an Excellence in Teaching Award from Colorado College. Along with her close collaborator Janani Balasubramanian, she is a co-author of Undisciplined: Radical Strategies for Growing Artist-Scientist Collaborations, forthcoming from University of California Press (2026).
Pages 24 & 46-48 of the Dresden Codex, a ca. 14th century Mayan hieroglyphic manuscript.
Gerardo Aldana is a professor of Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of over 50 scholarly publications and three monographs on the History of Mayan astronomy, including most recently Calculating Brilliance: an intellectual history of Mayan astronomy at Chich’en Itza (University of Arizona Press, 2021). He has since also ventured into speculative fiction, with the Berggruen Institute online publication of “Citlalli in the Sky with Cnidaria” and a forthcoming novella in a Xicanx Futurism anthology (Riot of Roses, 2025).
This event is hosted by Stanford Arts Institute (SAI) with support from the Office of the Vice President for the Arts.
If you need a disability-related accommodation for this event, please contact us at artsinstitute@stanford.edu at least two weeks prior to the event.
Out-of-town attendees may find it useful to view Stanford's Visitor Information page
Contact:
Stanford Arts Institute
artsinstitute@stanford.edu
