Dan Jay - Doubt, collectivity, and transformative creativity

Dr. Dan Jay has a mission to inspire where art and science meet. His life has been spent in the liminal and generative space between and among these domains of inquiry that are too often considered separate, distinct, even opposing. Yet, it is transformative creativity only possible from the co-mingling and conversation of art and science that we seem to be called to in the 21st century.

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Dan Jay is an Emeritus Professor of Developmental, Molecular, and Chemical Biology at Tufts University focused on cancer biology and was until recently the Dean of its Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. He is also an adjunct lecturer of Drawing and Painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston) where he teaches a course on How the Brain Perceives Art dedicated to his past mentor David Hubel.

In recent years, he has combined art and science with a unique perspective of a scientist’s mind and an artist’s eye. Dan develops new art media from scientific materials such as liquid nitrogen, magnetic fields, and elements of the Periodic Table to express inspiration in his science from childhood to the present day.

He has exhibited all over the world, far too many prestigious venues to list, so only a few of my favorites: Harvard University, Massachusetts State House, the French Cultural Center, Whitehorse Cultural Center (Yukon), the Museum of the National Center for Afro-American Artists, the Peabody Essex Museum, the Boston Museum of Science and the Advanced Research Centre, Glasgow.

Now Dan is working with The Burroughs Wellcome Fund to address the benefits, challenges, and sustainability of an Art-Science Nexus, a mission to envision a new and unprecedented Art-Science Institute for Transformative Creativity.

Dan has a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from Harvard and art training from several institutes including the Fine Arts Work Center in Massachusetts.