Materials Lab Workshop: Modeling Material Culture in Paper

Harvard Art Museums will first gather in the galleries with Elizabeth Rudy, the Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints, and visiting artist Angela Lorenz. Rudy will explain the main themes of the exhibition and focus on a few works that present mysteries that remain unsolved. Lorenz will show examples of her “McSpheres” (Material Culture Spheres). These spheres serve as a low-tech, open model for the 3-D visualization of objects. She developed them as tools to explore, categorize, and describe any object in the world—and to create connections with other objects. Participants will have an opportunity to closely examine and discuss the selected works together in the galleries. We will then proceed to the Materials Lab to fashion our own McSpheres. A conversation about the participants’ creations and the works in the exhibition will conclude the workshop.

Lorenz sees the McSphere as “a call and response specific to Dare to Know, but [also as] a way to access critical thinking that applies to any object, environment, cupboard, refrigerator, living room or neighborhood. Some people will go micro to the carbon atom and the water cycle, others macro to settler colonialism and global trade.” The artist’s hope is that the McSphere will serve as a tool for the exploration of objects in other museums, neighborhoods, and contexts.