Office of the Vice President for the Arts

Burt McMurtry Arts Initiatives Fund

The Burt McMurtry Arts Initiatives Fund offers support to academic staff or faculty-initiated interdisciplinary projects that test new directions and possibilities in the arts at Stanford.

How to Apply

Applications Open on March 3, 2026 for the 2026-27 Cycle

Grant Recipients

2025-26

ANITA MOHAN AND LAUREN TOOMER | Seeing Differently: Aesthetics, Anatomy, and Empathy in Art & Medicine

Project Summary

This interdisciplinary hands-on workshop invites Stanford medical students, residents, and fellows (16–20 participants) to explore the evolving concept of beauty through the lenses of art, anatomy, and aesthetic medicine. Co-led by Lauren Toomer, lecturer in Art & Art History and Clinical Anatomy, and Dr. Anita Mohan, board-certified plastic surgeon, the session spans historical, cultural, and medical understandings of the human form and its applications in clinical practice.

Biography

Dr. Anita Mohan is a clinical assistant professor in plastic and reconstructive surgeon at Stanford with a clinical and academic focus on restoring form and function through surgery. Dr Mohan's work integrates surgical precision with artistic insight. Her clinical focus spans complex reconstruction, anatomy, and aesthetic restoration. She is particularly drawn to the intersection of anatomy, beauty, and cultural norms, and how these influence both surgical practice and patient experiences. She began drawing and painting in childhood, developing a deep appreciation for form, proportion, and human expression. She believes art plays a vital role in plastic surgery—not only in shaping aesthetic outcomes, but also in enhancing communication, empathy, and anatomical understanding. Dr. Mohan sees visual storytelling as a powerful tool to explore how beauty, identity, and healing intersect across cultures and clinical care.

Lauren Toomer is a visual artist whose figurative work explores impermanence and the quiet moments of life. She works primarily in graphite drawing and site-responsive installation. Toomer earned her MFA from Stanford University, where she also studied anatomy, and holds a BA from UC Berkeley. She lectures in Stanford’s Departments of Art & Art History and Surgery, where she developed and directs the university’s art and anatomy curriculum. She also serves as Associate Director of Visual Arts for Medicine & the Muse, championing art programming across the School of Medicine.

Toomer’s work is permanently installed at Fair Oaks Health Center, Kaiser Permanente, and Stanford’s medical campus. Exhibition highlights include the SF Art Commission Gallery, Museum of Craft & Design, San Mateo County History Museum, Art on Paper Miami, and SCOPE NY. She recently presented her Art & Anatomy work at Weill Cornell Medicine in Doha, Qatar, and maintains a dedicated studio practice in SF.

Photo credit: Toni Bird

Grant Parker, person in grey suit and pink shirt photographed in front of a fence

GRANT PARKER | Trials on Stage

Project Summary

The project will stage microhistories of slavery at the Cape of Good Hope on the basis of 18th-century historical documents. These documents have already been adapted by Rush Rehm into forms that bring out their implicit dialogue and dramaturgy. On this basis we have some 25 trials of varying lengths on which to draw with a view to staged readings. In the workshop the dialogue will be refined, stagings tested, and choices will be further narrowed down to a smaller
set of trials.

Biography

Jennifer Brody, person with curly brown hair, wearing glasses looking into the camera

JENNIFER BRODY | Edmonia Lewis: A Symposium

Project Summary

The Edmonia Lewis Symposium would be an open gathering of local curators, scholars, students, artists, writers and community members. It will be the first symposium inspired by and dedicated to the sculptural art of Edmonia Lewis (born free in Upstate NY in 1844- and died in London in 1907). Of Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) and African descent, Lewis became the first internationally known, professional colored woman sculptor.

Biography

Jennifer DeVere Brody (she/her) holds a B.A. in Victorian Studies from Vassar College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in English and American Literature from the University of Pennsylvania. Her scholarship and service in African and African American Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, visual and performance studies have been recognized by numerous awards: a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2023 Virginia Howard Fellowship from the Bogliasco Foundation, support from the Mellon and Ford Foundations, the Monette-Horwitz Prize for Independent Research Against Homophobia, the Royal Society for Theatre Research, and the Thurgood Marshall Prize for Academics and Community Service among others. Her books include: Impossible Purities: Blackness, Femininity and Victorian Culture (Duke University Press, 1998), Punctuation: Art, Politics and Play (Duke University Press, 2008) a co-edited publication of James Baldwin’s illustrated book, Little Man, Little Man (Duke UP, 2018). and Moving Stones: About the Art of Edmonia Lewis(forthcoming from Duke University Press). She has served as the President of the Women and Theatre Program, on the board of Women and Performance and has worked with the Ford and Mellon Foundations. Her research and teaching focus on performance, aesthetics, politics as well as black feminist theory, black queer studies and contemporary cultural studies. At Stanford, she served as Chair of the Theater & Performance Studies Department (2012-2015) and Faculty Director of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity (2016-2021) where she won a major grant from the Mellon Foundation.

Photo Credit: Laura Bianchi

ROXANNE RAHNAMA HAZAVE| Mapping Memory: Civil Rights Legacies and Contemporary Contestations

Project Summary

A photo-political project tracing the Freedom Riders’ route, exploring contested symbols, memory, and racial justice today. This interdisciplinary project merges photography and political science to examine contestation over historical memory, symbols, and narratives in the American South. By retracing the 1961 route of the multiracial coalition of Freedom Riders -- from Washington, D.C. to their intended (but unrealized) final destination of New Orleans -- this project will explore the unfinished legacies of the Civil Rights Movement and ongoing struggles over racial justice.

Biography

Roxanne Rahnama is a Provostial Fellow and Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. She earned her Ph.D. in Politics from New York University in 2024, where she is also an alumni affiliate of the Identities & Ideologies Project. Her research focuses on the race and ethnic politics, gender and politics, status, and the role of ideology in sustaining hierarchy. Roxanne’s notable scholarship includes her recent publication “Monumental Changes: Confederate Symbol Removals and Racial Attitudes in the United States” in the Journal of Politics, which examines how Confederate symbol removals affect racial attitudes and hate crimes. Her research on the “Lost Cause” ideology explores how and when elite groups turn to ideology to maintain dominance, particularly through the case of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Her work contributes to understanding how symbols, rhetoric, and ideologization mobilization shape American politics and racial dynamics, with implications for contemporary debates around historical memory and racial justice.

Photo credit: Brianna Saba

2024-25

JENN BROPHY AND HELEN DANG | From Petri Dish to Palette: Exploring Bacterial-based Paint

Project Summary

This interdisciplinary project, spearheaded by Helen Dang (Science Program Manager, Bioengineering) and Jenn Brophy (Assistant Professor, Bioengineering), aims to showcase the potential of synthetic biology in the arts. By utilizing bioengineering techniques, the project seeks to transform bacteria into a bio-machine that produces fluorescent protein "pigment" for use in painting on cotton canvas. Through this endeavor, the project aims to raise awareness within the Stanford community about synthetic biology's role in the arts. This project will result in a workshop and gallery exhibition, inviting contemplation on synthetic biology, sustainability, and art materials.

Biography

Dr. Jennifer Brophy's lab develops technologies that enable the genetic engineering of plants and their associated microbes with the goal of driving innovation in agriculture for a sustainable future. The Brophy lab's work is focused in synthetic biology and the reprogramming of plant development for enhanced environmental stress tolerance.

Helen Dang is the Science Program Manager for the Stanford Department of Bioengineering. She earned her B.S. in Bioengineering from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Passionate about the intersection of science, art, and communication, Helen channels her creativity through her role as a science communicator and administrator, fostering community spaces around emerging synthetic biology and bioengineering initiatives at Stanford. She also practices as a ceramic artist and watercolor painter.

TAKAKO FUJIOKA | Improvisational Rap Art, Lyrics Database, and Rhyme-Rhythm Analysis

Project Summary

Rap music is popular worldwide and is practiced in various languages. Quantitative research on rap improvisation may hold an important key to understanding human cognitive processes of combining language rhymes and musical rhythms into the rap/hip-hop music style, and elucidating universally-shared and language-specific systems. However, it currently requires more freely available databases and tools to conduct such analyses, as commercially available rap music contains non-improvisational rap performance. At the same time, the Stanford campus has low visibility of rap/hip-hop music activities despite the popularity of the art form and its important connection to diversity in American society. Thus, the proposed project will combine the desire to pursue the scientific research goal of collecting and analyzing improvisational rap performance data and the desire to involve rap practices in students’ lives at Stanford and the surrounding local community. The whole project aims to organize three workshop+concert events featuring rap arts, collect audio recordings of improvisational rap performance in different languages for the database, and conduct quantitative analyses on rhyme and rhythm in rap to examine manners of music-language interactions. The project leader Takako Fujioka will work with Music graduate students and DJs and rappers in the Bay Area for this project and collaborate with Dr. Keith Cross (scholar, artist and educator, former Ph. D. student in Stanford Education, former U Hawaii professor) to continue rhyme and rhythm investigation.

Biography

Takako Fujioka grew up in Japan, playing music, hand-drawing comics, and making anime films. She earned a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Waseda University and a Ph.D. in Physiology from National Institute for Physiological Sciences. Then she moved to Toronto, Canada as a post-doctoral fellow supported by awards from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. In 2012, Takako opened her “Neuromusic” laboratory at Stanford University, in the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, equipped with EEG and 3D motion capture systems. The laboratory offers research opportunities to graduate and undergraduate students on various auditory perception and music cognition topics. Recent projects include neural correlates of temporal anticipation, expressive body movements, beat perception, joint improvisation, hip-hop rhyme processing, ensemble roles related to empathy, music perception for cochlear implant users, and music-supported neurorehabilitation. She serves as an Associate Editor in Frontier Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience, a research advisory council in the Academy of Neurologic Music Therapy, and a grant-committee member/reviewer/thesis examiner in Canada, the US, Australia, Asian and European countries. In her free time, Takako continues to play piano for chamber ensembles and jazz jamming.

A person in a long, dark coat leans against a white wall

LOCHLANN JAIN | An Apocrypha of Drowning

Project Summary

In Europe, drowning emerged as a notable form of accidental death in the mid-18th century. “Apparently drowned” bodies, teetering between life and death, presented objects of fear, revulsion, and fascination and the advocates faced intense religious and scientific resistance. In the complex project of making drowning into a public health issue that could be solved, the minting, awarding, and presenting of lifesaving medals took center stage: saving someone from drowning would become a heroic act. The medals were expensive to mint, and their aim was to induce lifesaving action while also seducing the middle and upper classes to the value the cause; the Society; and not incidentally, the very project of the new Enlightenment science.

I have designed and cast in silver five medals that investigate the paradoxes I have unearthed in my scholarly research on drowning. I have spent this year building dioramas related to the questions raised by medal-making as a social ritual and to display and configure the source materials used in their design. The next phase of the project will involve photographing, editing, printing, and mounting of this work for the final show.

Biography

Professor Lochlann Jain is a professional medical anthropologist and artist. Jain has studied American law and medicine in three books and multiple articles. Jain’s artwork strives to strike a balance: just short of humor but close enough to the bone to provoke a jolt of recognition and a new way of thinking. Jain’s work has won multiple awards and been supported by Guggenheim, NEH, NSF, Wenner Gren and other grants. Jain has presented art in Berlin, Denver, North Carolina, New York, London, and on Stanford’s campus and taught art workshops in London, University Chicago, and University of Hawaii.

2023-24

KATIE DIETER | Reimagining Black Diasporic Identity through the Arts

Project Summary

Through participation in the 7th Annual Rex Nettleford Arts Conference at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts (EMCVPA) in Kingston, Jamaica, African & African American Studies (AAAS) Creative Honors students engage with workshops, art exhibitions, and panel discussions concerning interdisciplinary arts in the Caribbean. The students will also participate in culturally immersive experiences in Kingston that showcase the country’s rich artistic traditions. Led by Dr. Katie Dieter, students explore meanings of Black diasporic identity in the Caribbean through a Black Studies lens. The culmination of the trip includes a collaborative panel between AAAS and EMCVPA titled “Re-imagining Black Diasporic Identity through the Arts” in the Winter quarter to showcase their experiences and share a digital archive of the trip with photography and/or other creative projects developed by the students.

SCOTT FENDORF | A Theatrical Inquiry into Environmental Justice Implications of California Wildfires

Project Summary

This project uses performing arts techniques to initiate a conversation and raise awareness about the environmental justice implications of California wildfires. We will work with local communities in Northern California to identify environmental justice problems caused by California wildfires for inmate firefighters and farm workers. Through collaboration with these communities, we will conduct theater workshops to create and perform a play at Stanford University that explores the personal experiences and stories of inmate firefighters and farm workers disproportionately impacted by California wildfires. This play will act as a catalyst for a series of conversations, talkbacks, and panels, including experts, local groups, and policymakers, to promote healthy discourse around the environmental justice implications of California wildfires. These approaches will help to create new directions for theater to address real-world problems such as environmental injustice, contributing to the discourse regarding the impact of the arts in future extreme environments caused by the climate crisis.

STEPHEN MURPHY-SHIGEMATSU| Grief and Culture

Project Summary

Grief as sorrow experienced after a loss is universal but is deeply affected by culture. Grief goes beyond what has happened to us and is connected to what we fear, what we love, and what we aspire toward. It is therefore intimately tied to not only specific incidents but also to the ongoing trauma that is part of systemic oppression and complicated by race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.

One way of addressing grief is to reimagine our relationship to power, accountability, and boundaries that are expressed differently cross-culturally. We are all impacted by systemic trauma that is perpetuated within our society through structural inequalities and expressed in our interpersonal relationships. Attending to our own grief in community context enables us to responsibly engage with others from a position of innate wholeness.

The arts are increasingly recognized as an integral source of healing that is sorely needed in a world ravaged by violence and disease. In this project, women of color artists will lead small group sessions in experiential learning and healing exercises through their particular art form. Our project responds to the need in the Stanford community for safe places of refuge for those grieving, especially those who feel marginalized from mainstream places. We anticipate the creation of a beloved community on campus.

KRISH SEETAH | Can Art Express Our Loss for Biodiversity?

Project Summary

This project integrates STEM and Arts, providing an opportunity for reflection for a broad section of our campus community. The bison's original range extended from Alaska south to the grasslands of Mexico and stretched from the Great Basin of Nevada to the Appalachian Mountains. A 3D printed skeleton will be mounted and handed over to the student body, equipped with a GPS tracker, with the aim that a (Big Blue) Bison will roam across campus!

This piece will encourage thought on sustainability and conservation, as well as the indigenous groups that depended on these animals in the past, and what the elimination of such pinnacle species mean for our society. Moreover, the piece asks: do we want to have phials of DNA and image files to be the legacy we leave of our natural world? With the launch of the new Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, this project responds to current activity around issues of sustainability that are now at the forefront of Stanford’s recent efforts.

2022-23

GIGI OTÁLVARO | Kinesthetic Delight: Playful Mindfulness in the Museums

Project Summary

Gigi Otálvaro, who leads LifeWorks, a program for integrative learning within Stanford Living Education, was awarded a grant for Kinesthetic Delight: Playful Mindfulness in the Museums, as part of their new initiative Art and Wellbeing Engagement (AWE). A contemplative community gathering at the Anderson Collection celebrating the power of art, mindfulness, and play, the event will highlight the essential role that art can play as a public health intervention to support mental health and wellbeing.

ROSE SALSEDA | El Centro: The Heart of Stanford’s Latinx Art Legacy

Project Summary

2021-22

ELIZABETH HADLY| Hearing the Anthropocene: A Synergy of Science and Music to Reveal Recent Human Impacts to Nature

Project Summary

MICHAEL RAU | The Future of Digital-Performance-Making: A Convening

Project Summary

This project to host a convening on performance-making that bridges the gap between artists and academics, focusing on interdisciplinary collaborations that point towards the future of theater-making. Stanford will host a three-day convening to bring together current industry professionals, artist and academics to think through the future. The convening will also be recorded and streamed onto the internet to allow for multiple avenues of engagement.

RICHARD MEYER | Anita Steckel: Feminist Art and Sexual Politics

Project Summary

Anita Steckel: The Feminist Art of Sexual Politics showcases the vibrant work of American feminist artist Anita Steckel (1930-2012) whose audacious art addresses issues of gender inequity, objectification, female desire, and racial injustice. Some 60 works spanning a period of nearly 50 years will be on display at the Stanford Art Gallery, thus making it the most far-reaching exhibition of the artist’s work to date.

2020-21

KIM BEIL | Talking in the Library: Conversations on Photobooks

Project Summary

LOCHLANN JAIN | The Lung is a Bird and Fish

Project Summary

JAMIE MELTZER | ChocolateHeads Dance and Documentary Film Workshop

Project Summary

BISSERA PENTCHEVA | En-chanted Images of Ste. Foy at Conques

Project Summary

2019-20

HIDEO MABUCHI | Intermateriality:Redox

Project Summary

DIANE FRANK | Dances in Conversation w/ Jim Campbell & the Architecture of the Anderson

Project Summary

This dance/music/art project, tentatively titled “Snap Sets & Continuous Forms 2.0” is a multi-layered site-specific performance project. The retrospective of works by light artist Jim Campbell, installed throughout the Anderson Collection, and the architecture of the museum building itself, will be the paired inspiration and platform for formal construction of the dance and music.

Due to COVID-19, the presentation of this project has been postponed. Frank hopes to resume planning for this component once the Anderson Collection is able to reopen.

YOUNG JEAN LEE | iPads and iPens for Playwriting

Project Summary

Young Jean Lee has been working as a professional playwright and director for the past sixteen years, and in 2018 became the first Asian-American female to have her play produced on Broadway. In her classes, students develop full-length plays, with an emphasis on learning how to create collaborative communities to support the further development of their plays after the class is over. Lee is utilizing grant funds to purchase iPads to facilitate real-time edits and annotations.

Didn't find what you were looking for?

Reach out with questions:

Ellen Oh

Director of Interdisciplinary Arts Programs

[email protected]

Edi Dai

Programs Associate

[email protected]

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Burt McMurtry Arts Initiatives Fund

The Burt McMurtry Arts Initiatives Fund offers support to academic staff or faculty-initiated interdisciplinary projects that test new directions and possibilities in the arts at Stanford.

Grant Recipients

2025-26

2024-25

2023-24

2022-23

2021-22

2020-21

2019-20

Didn't find what you were looking for?

Ellen Oh

Edi Dai