Ellen Levy, also known as Ellen K. Levy, is an American multimedia artist and scholar known for exploring art, science and technology interrelationships since the early 1980s. Levy works to highlight their importance through exhibitions, educational programs, publications and curatorial opportunities; often through collaborations with scientists including NASA, some in conjunction with Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology. She is a past president of the College Art Association and has published widely on art and complex systems.
Levy, "whose fascination with technology is not only tinged by skepticism but also rivaled by an interest in the acts of God that are sometimes visited on grand technological schemes -- witness the Challenger," was one of the early artists commissioned by the NASA Art Program, in 1985. Her early career focused on painting and exhibitions at then alternative science spaces such as the New York Academy of Sciences in 1984, NASA; and the National Academy of Sciences, and is also in their collection. She has had numerous solo exhibitions in the United States and abroad, including at Associated American Artists and Michael Steinberg Fine Arts in New York City. Shared Premises: Innovation and Adaptation was exhibited at the National Technical Museum in Prague. Her work was also included in the Second Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art exhibit, Petroliana . Her talks and exhibitions explore attention, perception, and genetics, including human error and inattention blindness in Stealing Attention; in exhibitions involving the environment such as Weather Report and Climate Change, curated by Lucy Lippard, and Face Off, curated by Ronald Feldman; and a two-person exhibition based on data from the magazine Skeptical Inquirer; and in her New York Public Library site-specific exhibition Meme Machines, using mixed media to visualize cultural evolution and ways of creating and transmitting knowledge, which was also the subject of an Art Talk interview with novelist Siri Hustvedt. Former chair of Leonardo/ISAST's LEAF initiative, Levy co-directs, with , the New York City-based Leonardo Art and Science Evening Rendezvous, part of Leonardo/ISAST's international program of evening gatherings that brings artists and scientists together for informal presentations and conversations. A twice invited participant to The Watermill Center’s Art & Consciousness Workshop, she was President of the College Art Association from 2004 to 2006, Special Advisor on the Arts and Sciences at the from 2012 to 2017, and a Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Arts and Sciences at Skidmore College in 1999, a position funded by the Henry Luce Foundation, and named one of the 66 Brilliant Women in Creative Technology. Levy has published in many books and journals including Leonardo/ISAST's journal Leonardo. Guest editor of the first widely distributed, in-depth academic publication about genomics and art in 1996, the College Art Association Art Journal's Contemporary Art and the Genetic Code included articles by Stephen J. Gould, Roald Hoffmann, Robert Root-Bernstein, Martin Kemp, and Dorothy Nelkin.
Selected bibliography
Levy, E., Levy, D., & Goldberg, M, "Monkey in the Middle: PreDarwinian Evolutionary Thought and Artistic Creation," Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 3 : 95-106.
"Art Enters the Biotechnology Debate: Questions of Ethics," Eds., G. Levin, E. King; Ethics and the Visual Arts,Ch. 16, 199-216, Allworth Press, New York, 2006,
"Defining Life: Artists Challenge Conventional Classifications," Eds., M. Lovejoy, C. Paul, V. Vesna; Context Providers, 275-299, 2011, Intellect Press, Bristol and University of Chicago Press, Chicago,
"Bioart and Nanoart in a Museum Context: Terms of Engagement," Ed., J. Marstine; The Routledge Companion to Museum Ethics: Redefining Ethics for the Twenty-First Century Museum, 2011, 445-464, US and UK: Routledge Press.
"Neuroscience and the Arts Today," in PAJ, 35, 8-23, 2013,
"Complexity" with Philip Galanter and Manuel A. Báez, Leonardo, volume 36, issue 4, pp. 259–267,
"The Genome and Art: Finding Potential in Unknown Places," Leonardo, 34, 2014, 172-175. 2001,
"Sleuthing the Mind," Leonardo, 47, 427-435, 2014
Levy, E., Ed. with Sichel, B., "Contemporary Art and the Genetic Code," Art Journal, 55 Spring Issue 1996, College Art Association, New York,
"Contemporary Art and the Aesthetics of Natural Selection," Darwin and Theories of Aesthetics and Cultural History, Eds., Barbara Larson and Sabine Flach, Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Press, 145-165, 2013.
"Classifying Kubler: Between the Complexity of Science and Art," Im Maschenwerk der Kunstgeschichte, Eds., S. Maupeu, K. Schankweiler, S. Stallschus; 225-245, Kulturverlag Kadmos, Berlin, 2014.
"Enraptured: Attention and Art," Perception and Agency in Shared Spaces of Contemporary Art, Eds., C.Albu and D. Schuld; Routledge Press, US and UK, 171-183, 2017.
