Ned Kahn is an environmental artist and sculptor, known in particular for museum exhibits he has built for the Exploratorium in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

. His works usually intend to capture an invisible aspect of nature and make it visible.

Early life

Kahn was born in New York City and raised in

Stamford, Connecticut Stamford () is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut, outside of Manhattan. It is Connecticut's second-most populous city, behind Bridgeport. With a population of 135,470, Stamford passed Hartford and New Haven in population as of the 2020 ...

. At the age of 10, Kahn staged his first exhibition of sculptures fashioned from items salvaged from a junkyard, where his mother had taken him. After graduating with a degree in botany and environmental science from the

University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university in Storrs, Connecticut, a village in the town of Mansfield. The primary 4,400-acre (17.8 km2) campus is in Storrs, approximately a half hour's drive from Hart ...

in 1982, Kahn moved to San Francisco, where he was fascinated by the Exploratorium. He worked there from 1982 to 1996 under the tutelage of the museum's founder,

Frank Oppenheimer Frank Friedman Oppenheimer (August 14, 1912 – February 3, 1985) was an American particle physicist, cattle rancher, professor of physics at the University of Colorado, and the founder of the Exploratorium in San Francisco. A younger brother ...

. Later, Kahn was the artist in residence at the

Headlands Center for the Arts Headlands Center for the Arts hosts an internationally recognized artist-in-residence program, and interdisciplinary public programs. It is situated in a campus of artist-renovated military buildings in the Marin Headlands, in Marin County, Cali ...

starting in 2001. Kahn moved from San Francisco to

Graton, California Graton is an unincorporated town and census-designated place (CDP) in west Sonoma County, California, United States. The population was 1,707 at the 2010 census. Graton's ZIP code is 95444. The town also has a culinary reputation attributed to tw ...

in 1998 and works from the Ned Kahn Studios in

Sebastopol Sevastopol (; uk, Севасто́поль, Sevastópolʹ, ; gkm, Σεβαστούπολις, Sevastoúpolis, ; crh, Акъя́р, Aqyár, ), sometimes written Sebastopol, is the largest city in Crimea, and a major port on the Black Sea ...

. He is married and has two children. Kahn cites his daily meditation routine as key to his artistic development.

Awards

Kahn won a

MacArthur Foundation The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private foundation that makes grants and impact investments to support non-profit organizations in approximately 50 countries around the world. It has an endowment of $7.0 billion and p ...

genius grant The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 ind ...

" fellowship in 2003, and the

National Design Award The American National Design Awards, founded in 2000, are funded and awarded by Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is a design museum housed within the Andrew Carnegie Mansion in Manhattan, New Y ...

for landscape architecture in 2005.

Works

Some examples of Kahn's work to capture the invisible include building facades that move in waves in response to wind; indoor tornadoes and vortices made of fog, steam, or fire; and a transparent sphere containing water and sand which, when spun, erodes a beach-like ripple pattern into the sand surface. In 2003 Kahn collaborated with

Koning Eizenberg Architecture, Inc. Koning Eizenberg Architecture (KEA) is an architecture firm located in Santa Monica, California established in 1981. The firm is recognized for a range of project types including: adaptive reuse of historic buildings, educational facilities, comm ...

on ''Articulated Cloud'', a piece installed on the exterior walls of the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh consisting of hundreds of movable flaps that respond to the wind creating visible patterns. His work is in the collection of di Rosa, Napa.

References

External links

Official website
*http://greenmuseum.org/kahn * {{DEFAULTSORT:Kahn, Ned American artists Environmental artists Living people Year of birth missing (living people) MacArthur Fellows University of Connecticut alumni

Early life

Awards

Works

See also

References

External links