Ned Kahn is an environmental artist and sculptor, known in particular for museum exhibits he has built for the
Exploratorium
The Exploratorium is a museum of science, technology, and arts in San Francisco, California. Characterized as "a mad scientist's penny arcade, a scientific funhouse, and an experimental laboratory all rolled into one", the participatory natu ...
in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish for " 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 fourth most populous in California and 17t ...
. 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 202 ...
. 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 H ...
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 starting in 2001.
Kahn moved from San Francisco to
Graton, California[ in 1998][ and works from the Ned Kahn Studios in Sebastopol. 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 "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 MacArthur Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to ...
" fellowship in 2003,National Design Award
The American National Design Awards, founded in 2000, are funded and awarded by Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. There are seven official design categories, and three additional awards. Supplemental awards can be given at the discretio ...
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. on ''Articulated Cloud'', a piece installed on the exterior walls of the ]Children's Museum of Pittsburgh
The Children's Museum of Pittsburgh is a hands-on interactive children's museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is in the Allegheny Center neighborhood in Pittsburgh's Northside.
History
The Children's Museum of Pittsburgh was founded in 1983 ...
consisting of hundreds of movable flaps that respond to the wind creating visible patterns.[
His work is in the collection of di Rosa, Napa.]
See also
* Environmental art
* Environmental sculpture
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