Director of Cultural Programs, National Academy of Sciences

"Art in the Science Institution"

November 5 , 2009 
Schuster Concert Hall, Creative Arts Center 

Presented in partnership with the President's Office, STEAM3 (Science/Technology/Engineering/Art/Mathematics/Medicine/Music), CELIA (Collaborative Education, Leadership, and Innovation in the Arts), the Department of Art and Art History, and the Department of Music

JD Talasek is the director of cultural programs of the National Academy of Sciences, a program that is focused on the exploration of intersections between science, medicine, technology, and visual culture. He was the creator and organizer of the recent international online symposium on Visual Culture and Bioscience and co-editor of the published transcripts (distributed by D.A.P., March 2009). Talasek holds an M.F.A. in studio arts from the University of Delaware, an M.A. in museum studies from the University of Leicester, and a B.S. in photography from East Texas State University. He has taught photography at the University of Delaware as well as Essex and Howard Community Colleges, and is currently on the faculty at The Johns Hopkins University in the Museum Studies Master’s Program.

Talasek has curated several exhibitions at the National Academy of Sciences, including Visionary Anatomies, which toured through the Smithsonian Institution in 2004 through 2006; Absorption + Transmission: Work by Mike and Doug Starn; The Tao of Physics: Photographs by Arthur Tress; and Cycloids: Paintings by Michael Schultheis. At the University of Delaware, he organized and curatedObservations in an Occupied Wilderness: Photographs by Terry Falke and LightBox: The Visual AIDS Archive Project.

He is the art advisor for Issues in Science and Technology magazine, published by the University of Texas at Dallas and The National Academies. Talasek serves on an advisory panel that is exploring the creation of an art exhibition program at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.

JD Talasek was born in 1966 in Dallas, Texas.