Evolving Arts

T AKING S CIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION OUT OF THE LAB AND onto the st A ge

Two dramatically lit dancers twirl on a spiraling DNA sculpture, creating a living double helix, while the audience strives to become a more complex organism in an interactive performance at the Schwartz Center Lab Theater.

Paintings of tube worms wearing jeweled necklaces, panoramic nanoscapes captured by electron microscope, and rare first editions of Charles Darwin’s books are on display at the Woodruff Library’s Schatten Gallery.

And playing to full houses at the DUC’s Mary Gray Munroe theater is Hominid, a modern-day Macbeth—complete with betrayal, murder, and madness—that unfolds with a twist: the Theater

Emory actors are recreating a true story documented by primatologist Frans de Waal in his book Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes

Emory celebrated the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species and the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth by hosting exhibitions and performances of art, music, plays, literature, and other endeavors with themes of origin, creation, and evolution in multiple locations across campus (replication: a plus in evolutionary biology).

Many of these exhibitions coincided with the Evolution of Brain, Mind, and Culture conference at Emory in November, which brought together nine of the world’s leading scholars of evolution.

Atlanta symphony Director to Become Artist-in- residence

Award-winning British science writer Matt Ridley, author of The Origins of Virtue and Nature via Nurture, gave the keynote, “Darwin in Genes and Culture.” Some of the questions the experts took on: How does growing from a child into an adult shape the evolution of our minds? What are the origins of empathy, fairness, and cooperation?

This spring, Emory and one of Atlanta’s most prominent figures in the arts will make beautiful music together when Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Music Director Robert Spano begins a three-year appointment as a University Distinguished Artist-in-Residence.

Maestro Spano will coteach seminars, lecture, and present programs on literature, philosophy, science, and musicology for three weeks during each of the spring semesters from 2010 to 2012, actively participating in Emory’s scholarly community.

Spano will first collaborate with Emory music professor Steven Everett on metaphysics and the origins of music. The project, “Tonality and Sonata Form: Pythagorean Tuning, Numerology, and Cosmology,” comprises lectures and a three-concert series, which will focus on the violin sonatas of Mozart and Brahms and the cello sonatas of Beethoven with Spano at the keyboard.

Candler Professor of Chemistry and Biology David Lynn has concluded that art and evolution have a lot in common: “Complex structures of biology seem remarkably, almost magically, to selfassemble.”—M.J.L.

scientist magazine ranks emory “fifth Best Place to work”

The Scientist magazine’s readers ranked Emory as the “Fifth Best Place to Work in Academia in the United States,” based on a survey of more than 2,350 life scientists. Emory ranked especially high in the categories of peers and job satisfaction.

“It has always fascinated and inspired me that, before studying philosophy at the Platonic Academy in Athens, the aspiring student first needed to study arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music,” Spano says. “The intellectual underpinnings of Western music and their relations to these other disciplines are perhaps best expressed in Pythagorean theory. I eagerly anticipate exploring the interdisciplinary nature of music within the vital intellectual environment at Emory and am deeply honored to have been invited.”

Emory Recognized As Sustainable Development Leader

The Urban Land Institute Atlanta District Council honored Emory with its Sustainable Development Award in September for the University’s projects and programs in Atlanta and for its sustainable campus development practices (www.sustainability.emory.edu).