Meet Some Staff Artists

David Barker is art director for the Exploratorium’s Institutional Media department, and has been around the museum since 1980. With a background in art and science, David works in all facets of the museum. He creates banners, Web content, graphics, publications, posters, and multimedia. He also has designed and produced numerous exhibits and exhibitions for the Exploratorium, and created content and illustrations for the museum’s award-winning Science of Baseball website. He’s a self-professed baseball nut and is currently working with the San Francisco Giants to promote Science of Baseball at the ballpark, in Giants Magazine, and in appearances, workshops, and activities. His current interests include model rocketry, softball, and trying to keep up with a two-year-old rescue greyhound.

Liz Keim initiated the Exploratorium’s Cinema Arts Program and film collection in 1982 and has since worked to integrate the visions of independent media artists into museum programming, public exhibition, and education. Under her direction, the Cinema Arts Program has expanded to include outdoor screenings, filmmaker residencies, installations, and workshops. Liz studied with Edith Kramer, former director of the Pacific Film Archives, and Robert Frank, the noted photographer and cinematographer. She has served on many film juries and participated in symposiums nationwide and has presented film programs in New York, Texas, North Carolina, London, and Singapore. She is published in Left in the Dark: Portraits of San Francisco Movie Theaters, a collection of literary essays on the city’s thriving cinema culture. Liz currently co-teaches at the San Francisco Art Institute and the University of San Francisco and has lectured at various campuses around the San Francisco Bay Area.

Walter Kitundu is a visual artist, instrument builder, photographer, and composer. He works as a multimedia artist in the Learning Studio, where he helps design and build environments for learning, develops and facilitates activities, and works as a photographer and graphic designer. He has created hand-built record players powered by the wind and rain, fire and earthquakes, birds, light, and the force of ocean waves. Walter has performed and been in residence at art centers and science museums worldwide. He has performed with the renowned Kronos Quartet, bassist Meshell Ndegeocello, the electronic music duo Matmos, and the legendary Marshall Allen in venues from Carnegie Hall to a high school library in Egilstaadir, Iceland. In 2008, Walter became a MacArthur Fellow.

Shawn Lani is a senior artist at the Exploratorium. Most recently, Shawn worked as lead developer for the Outdoor Exploratorium, a series of interactive exhibits at San Francisco’s Ft. Mason designed to help visitors explore the subtle phenomena of the everyday world and the complex systems at play in outdoor environments. His work can be summarized as a collection of curios created as accessible objects of wonder; mysterious yet navigable. Ideally, interacting with them leads to the type of investigations common to both scientists and artists: noticing details, asking questions, and exploring phenomena. Shawn is also an accomplished regional artist with large-scale water sculptures in downtown San Francisco and pieces on permanent display in over forty national and international venues. He received a design award from the New Orleans chapter of the American Institute of Architects for his work with fellow Exploratorium artists on a monumental kinetic building facade.

Marina McDougall is an artist and curator interested in the intersections of art and science, and nature and culture. Marina first worked at the Exploratorium as a film curator in the Cinema Arts Program and recently returned as arts project director. She is currently organizing a conference called Art as a Way of Knowing sponsored by the National Science Foundation, and is working to develop new arts initiatives. Marina has organized numerous exhibitions and public programs for places including the MIT Media Lab and the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, where she served as the curator of art and design. She is a co-founder of the Studio for Urban Projects, an arts collaborative and storefront dedicated to re-imagining the city. Marina’s long-term passion is to develop a public garden called the Garden of Forking Paths. Its first project, Machine in the Garden: A Pastoral, is an outdoor classroom that doubles as a sculptural landscape; it opened in 2009.

Mark McGowan is the art director for the exhibit floor. He works with other designers and exhibit developers to create environments and signage for the Exploratorium collection of idiosyncratic exhibits. He has a background in filmmaking, photography, and graphic design, and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. In addition to producing several self-published books of photography, Mark has been busy building a cabin and designing and building a house on 38 acres of land in the foothills of the Sierras for the past several years.

Peter Richards is a senior artist at the Exploratorium. He worked with Exploratorium Founder Frank Oppenheimer to set up arts programming and served as arts program director through 1998. He is best known for creating , a wave-activated sound sculpture located on the San Francisco waterfront. Peter has permanent outdoor installations at Artpark in Lewiston, New York, and in several sites in California and Washington. He recently completed a major work for the Valley Metro Light Rail System in Phoenix, Arizona. He has taught at the Center for Experimental and Interdisciplinary Arts at San Francisco State University, Ecole d’Art Aix en Provence, at the San Francisco Art Institute, and Stanford University. He is a co-founder of McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, North Carolina, and was a research fellow at the Studio for Creative Inquiry, Carnegie Mellon University. He is past chair of the Alliance of Artist Communities Board of Trustees. Currently, he’s collaborating with Sue Richards on several public art commissions. Peter received a BA in sculpture from Colorado College and an MFA in sculpture from the Rinehart School of Sculpture.

Amy Snyder is the senior photographer at the Exploratorium. Last fall she traveled with a media crew to Hawaii for the Never Lost: Polynesnia Navigation website. Her work has been published in numerous places including the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, Sunset magazine, Science magazine, and The Boston Globe. She has received numerous awards for her photographic work including being a selected artist for Sotheby’s Young International Artist Program. She has exhibited work nationally and internationally. Amy received a BA in German from the University of Michigan and an MFA in photography with highest distinction from the California College of Arts in Oakland, California, in 1995.

Jordan Stein is the visiting artist coordinator at the Exploratorium. He facilitates the operation of the Artist-in-Residence program and works with visiting artists in various capacities from project support to program development. Additionally, Jordan develops arts education programming and is involved in the conceptualization of the Art as a Way of Knowing conference at the museum. Jordan received an MFA in new genres from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2005 and is a practicing artist.

Susan Schwartzenberg is a senior artist at the Exploratorium, where she has been a curator, photographer, designer, and artist, and served as director of media. At the museum she has participated in many exhibit development and Web-based projects. She was a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and has taught at the San Francisco Art Institute, the California College of Art, and Stanford University. As a photographer and visual artist, she has received numerous awards, and has taken part in residencies and exhibitions worldwide.

Samuel Sharkey works in the Cinema Arts Program with Liz Keim, its founder and director. With her collaboration and guidance, Sam curates a variety of programs for the museum both inside the McBean Theatre as well as outside of traditional cinematic contexts on the museum floor and outdoors. His interest in film extends to its potential to engage audiences in thought, participation, and discussion. The sound and image may act as catalysts to other worlds or deeper investigations of our own. Sam’s passion extends outside of the Exploratorium’s walls to understanding and enacting the power of visual language and storytelling with audiences.

Pamela Winfrey is a playwright and performer with a bachelor’s degree in theater and a master’s degree in interdisciplinary arts. She has been at the Exploratorium since 1979 and has worked as an Explainer and for the teaching programs, ran the Tactile Dome, started the Volunteer department, was the director of the performing arts program, acted as director for the arts, and is now a senior artist. Over the years, she has curated numerous performance series, exhibitions, artist residencies, and gallery installations. Pam has served on many panels, including the Interactive Arts Panel for Ars Electronica, and in 2009 was the lead curatorial consultant for emerging art forms for Creative Capital. As a playwright, she specializes in writing absurd plays for a thinking audience. She is currently in residence at Climate Theatre.

Mary Elizabeth Yarbrough is an exhibit developer who has created and designed a number of immersive environments and tabletop exhibits for the Listen and Geometry Playground collections. For Geometry Playground, she developed the wood Rotating Through Shapes cubes and tunnels, the Large Anamorphic Mirror Hopscotch, Distorted Drawing in Mirrors, Distorted Chair (with Diane Pfeiffer), and Conical Mirror. For Listen, she developed Outquiet Yourself, Sound Bite, Sonic Storytelling (with Tony Palermo and David Thorgerson), Hearing Health Kiosk (with H.E.A.R. founder Kathy Peck), and Sound Memories (with Sue Allen). Mary Elizabeth received her MFA from CCAC in 2002. She is a practicing visual artist and a musician.