Krista Tippett “On Being” Live—a conversation with Margaret Wertheim

Krista Tippett hosts a conversation at the MIA with science writer Margaret Wertheim in this live version of Tippett’s public-radio show On Being.

Tippett is a Peabody-award-winning broadcaster, New York Times bestselling author, and the creator and host of On Being, where she takes up the great animating questions of human life: What does it mean to be human? And how do we want to live? Krista and her guests reach beyond the headlines to explore meaning, faith, and ethics amidst the political, economic, cultural, and technological shifts of 21st century life.

Margaret Wertheim is a science writer and co-creator (with her twin sister, Christine) of the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef project. Perhaps the most popular art-and-science endeavor on the planet, with more than three million visitors, the project recreates coral-reef creatures using a crochet technique invented by a mathematician. Tracing a line from sea slugs to general relativity and ocean acidification, Wertheim asserts that this nexus of art and science may encourage a shift in consciousness about humanity’s role in the ecological future of our planet. Her TED talk about the project has been viewed more than a million times and translated into 20 languages.

Wertheim is also the director of the Institute For Figuring, a Los Angeles nonprofit she founded with her sister to promote public engagement with the aesthetic and poetic dimensions of science and mathematics. Through the IFF, Wertheim has created exhibitions and participatory art-and-science programs for the Hayward Gallery in London, the Science Gallery in Dublin, the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. She has authored three books on the cultural history of physics, including Pythagoras’ Trousers and The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace, and lectured widely about the intersections of science, art and culture. Her articles have been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Guardian, AEON, and Cabinet.

This program is presented in conjunction with the exhibition “The Nature of Nature,” the third installation in an innovative series connecting art with relevant issues in everyday life. In multiple mini-exhibitions spanning 10 galleries in the Target Wing, MIA curators probe our understanding of nature as depicted in contemporary and historical works of art from all areas of the museum’s permanent collection. By juxtaposing diverse works of art focused on a single theme, these installations invite visitors to explore fundamental ideas about our evolving relationship to nature over time, across cultures, and in our lives today. The live conversation will be recorded for broadcast on public radio at a later date. No late seating.

Admission: $10; $5 for MIA members; free for members of the Contemporary Affinity Group. To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or online.