Getty Arts Event Features Works by HSA Faculty

PST ART: Art & Science Collide is a regional landmark Getty arts event—the largest art program in the U.S. and one of the most expansive art events in the world. PST ART, which runs from September 2024 through February 2025, features hundreds of artists and dozens of exhibitions in museums and institutes spanning from Santa Barbara to San Diego—all exploring the intersection of art and science, past and present. Among the featured artists this year are Harvey Mudd College faculty members from the Department of Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts, Jia Gu and Rachel Mayeri, as well as Isabel Beavers, the department’s 2024 Hixon-Riggs Early Career Fellow.

Beavers, a postdoctoral scholar from Tufts University, creates work that explores ecologies, examines environmental histories and postulates about climate futures through multimedia installation and new media. Their work is exhibiting in two PST ART shows—Transformative Currents: Art and Action in the Pacific Ocean at Oceanside Museum of Art and Eco Encoded at RIP SPACE in downtown Los Angeles.

Gu is an assistant professor of architecture at Harvey Mudd whose work explores histories of knowledge production through the lens of media studies, cultural techniques and material cultures (i.e., how we know and show our histories). She is co-curator of the PST ART show Material Acts: Experimentation in Architecture and Design, which examines the role of nature as a starting point for material experimentation in architecture, craft and science. 

Mayeri is a professor of media studies whose work at the intersection of science and art explores topics ranging from the history of special effects to the human animal. Her work is featured in three PST ART shows from Los Angeles to San Diego—Experimentations 1: Feminist Film Experiments, Embodied Pacific: Ocean Unseen, and Orfeo Nel Canale Alimentare in Atmosphere of Sound: Sonic Art in times of Climate Disruption.

“I worked for several summers on the video installation ‘R/P FLIP R.I.P.’ now on view at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institute of Oceanography,” says Mayeri. “I spoke with scientists, scholars, curators and crew members and heard incredible stories about ocean circulation, whale song, mechanical challenges on high seas, comradery and ship food. I treasured the experience and all the friends and conversations I made along the way.”

Supported by over $20 million in grants from Getty for groundbreaking, research-based exhibitions and wide-ranging public programs, PST ART creates opportunities for civic dialogue around urgent problems through project topics that range from climate change and environmental justice to the future of AI and alternative medicine.