Patricia Olynyk, the Florence and Frank Bush Professor of Art at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, has been named inaugural fellow in The Medicine & Media Arts Initiative, a new scholarly endeavor that will support the artistic exploration of contemporary medical science and biotechnology.
Spearheaded by the ArtSci Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, the initiative aims to act as a conduit for advancing new projects and artistic research that “reimagine the medicalized body, corporality, notions of embodiment, posthumanism, and the effects of our environment on our sense of bodily presence and well-being in the world.” Partner organizations include the UCLA School of Medicine and the California NanoSystems Institute, as well as the Sam Fox School, Washington University’s Institute for Public Health and its medical humanities minor in Arts & Sciences.
In addition to the fellowship, Olynyk will chair the Medicine & Media Arts advisory board. Joining her on the board are four additional university faculty: Piroska Kopar, assistant professor of acute and critical care surgery at the School of Medicine; Rebecca Messbarger, professor of Italian and co-founder of the medical humanities program in Arts & Sciences; William Powderly, MD, the Larry J. Shapiro Director of the Institute for Public Health; and Shanti Parikh, associate professor of anthropology and associate chair of African and African American studies, both in Arts & Sciences.
