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Collection Selects: Wyss Institute
The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University leverages nature's design principles to develop new radical solutions for healthcare, energy, architecture, robotics, and engineering. Guest curated by Wyss founding director Don Ingber, in collaboration with his co-faculty, Joann Aizenberg, Jennifer Lewis, Radhika Nagpal, and Pam Silver, the team selected works from Cooper Hewitt's collection to illustrate the theme of Biofuturism.
Biofuturism is a formulation of Futurism, the art movement that spread across Europe and the world in the early twentieth century that celebrated the sensation of energy, speed, and dynamism in modern technology. Its pioneering visionaries believed that their creations would hurtle the world into the future.
They practiced across many media: painting, sculpture, theater, film, and architecture as well as graphic, industrial, interior, urban, and textile design.
One century later, the Wyss Institute is helping to lead a Biofuturism movement that looks to nature for inspiration. It is led by visionaries who use biological design principles and collaborate across multiple disciplines. In this Selects exhibition, the Wyss Institute team presents objects from Cooper Hewitt's collection, the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum, as well as the Wyss Institute's own projects to explore how Biofuturism--anticipating the future--can use design to engineer a better world. |