A MacArthur Fellowship Award winner and Michigan State University professor of physiology will visit campus today to discuss the importance of merging science and art.
Robert Root-Bernstein will visit to extend the 26-year tradition of the Edmund F. Petty Memorial Lecture, which brings prominent artists or art enthusiasts to campus.
Tania Said, director of education at David Owsley Museum of Art, said Root-Bernstein “was chosen for the special understanding he brings about the scientific benefits of learning about and making art. “
Root-Bernstein received his doctorate in the History of Science from Princeton in 1980 and knows about the creative mind and person with his reception of the MacArthur Fellowship Award in 1981 for his work at that time in the history and philosophy of science.
The award, coupled with a $500,000 grant, is given by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation annually to a group of individuals who express creativity not on previous accomplishments, but on their potential research in their fields.
Root-Bernstein’s research as a physiologist focuses on drug interactions, AIDS and the historical and philosophical perspectives on science and its methods. When he isn’t researching or teaching, he speaks about the relationship between art and science at public forums.
Said chose Root-Bernstein to present the lecture this year for multiple reasons, but the spark came from a speech he made at a state conference for the Art Education Association of Indiana.
She said she believes students, faculty and locals should attend the lecture because of how Root-Bernstein promotes and understands the benefits of interdisciplinary approaches for increasing and improving creativity.
“On a campus where almost everyone is a specialist, or one in the making, [Root-Bernstein] reminds us how knowing something is not just understanding it if we really want to make a difference and have an impact,” she said. “We need the arts, humanities and science together for improving what we do with what we know.”
The lecture has a history of hosting other prominent members of the art community, including former director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., John Carter Brown III, and renowned abstract expressionist painter Grace Hartigan.
“I hope people will leave with a renewed appreciation of how much artists are contributing to science and technology both indirectly, by transforming how we perceive the world and think about it, and also as innovators themselves,” Root-Bernstein said.
The event is free to the public, thanks to funding by the Petty family, the Margaret Ball Petty Foundation and the Ball Brothers Foundation.
