{"id":141886,"date":"2026-01-20T18:45:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T18:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/141886\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T18:45:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T18:45:15","slug":"ancient-wisdom-for-a-future-ecology-at-di-rosa-sf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/141886\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology’ at di Rosa SF"},"content":{"rendered":"

Independently, Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg have each left an enviable mark on the universe of interdisciplinary creativity. <\/p>\n

In her visual art, Shlain\u2014a filmmaker, best-selling author, and creator of the Webby Award (which, incidentally, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year)\u2014is best known for challenging conceptions of patriarchy, colonialism, and the passage of time. In his, Goldberg\u2014professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley, co-founder of Ambidextrous Robotics and the Moxie Institute\u2014is best known for visualizing ideas through telerobotics, automation, and AI.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/ The Artists with Abstract Expression(Stefanie Atkinson Schwartz) <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that the two are strangers to working together. Life partners for three decades, they\u2019ve co-written episodes for the Emmy-nominated series The Future Starts Here<\/a> and the award-winning Sundance film, The Tribe<\/a>. They\u2019ve parented two children.<\/p>\n

But it was the influence of something even more enduring than family that brought Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg to their most comprehensive collaboration to date: trees. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe were both working on them,\u201d says Shlain\u2014she on Dendrofemenology<\/a>, a series reimagining tree ring dating through a feminist lens, Goldberg on a census that analyzed foliage density to illustrate neighborhood inequities in Los Angeles. Combining forces spawned a whole new kind of offspring. <\/p>\n

They called it Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology: Trees, Time, and Technology<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At birth, their progeny was six works intertwining natural and digital worlds through time, presented at the Skirball Cultural Center in L.A. in 2024 as part of the Getty PST Art: Art & Science Collide<\/a> initiative. A little over a year later, it\u2019s quadrupled in size. On Thursday, all 24 pieces\u2014works Shlain describes as \u201cphysical manifestations of conversations we\u2019ve had for 30 years about art, humanity, feminism, philosophy\u201d\u2014go on display at the di Rosa SF<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/ DendroJudaeology: A Timeline of the Jewish People. Reclaimed wood. 3 in x 62 in(Stefanie Atkinson Schwartz) <\/p>\n

Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology: Trees, Time, and Technology<\/a> \u201cis almost about looking at the world through trees, letting trees be the lens to see things in a new way,\u201d Shlain explains from the buzzing, still-blank galleries at the Minnesota Street Project last week.<\/p>\n

The largest of those lenses is the Tree of Knowledge, a 10,000-pound slice of salvaged eucalyptus on which etchings of humanity\u2019s biggest questions spiral outward from those facing the earliest Homo sapiens to today\u2019s technologically-induced concerns. The elephantine cross-section will dominate the Atrium at the Minnesota Street Project, while its lighter-weight twin appears side-by-side with other works examining the \u201chistory of history,\u201d the way humans have archived knowledge for future generations (If We Lose Ourselves); key moments in California\u2019s environmental and cultural history (Living on the Edge); the history of Jewish tradition (DendroJudaeology: A Timeline of the Jewish People); and more.<\/p>\n

Unlike the worst couples you know, conspiring together on Ancient Wisdom hasn\u2019t meant giving up their individual identities to create them. In the exhibition, pieces selected from Shlain and Goldberg\u2019s independent careers stand in conversation with the collaborative ones, including the former\u2019s Gravitas, the realization of an idea she\u2019s long wanted to execute. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a huge swing set that doesn\u2019t look like a swing set,\u201d with three suspended tree ring sections on which visitors can hitch a ride. \u201cSwings are pendulums, which are also about gravity or time.\u201d Their arcing movement, she explains, is a metaphor for traveling from past to present to future. <\/p>\n

\"\"\/ Ken Goldberg, Telegarden. Photograph printed on Dibond. 36 in x 58 in(Robert Wedemeyer) <\/p>\n

ReBloom, Shlain\u2019s favorite of Goldberg\u2019s independent works, is a generative video earthwork that translates seismic activity from the Hayward Fault into rings of color sampled from the landscape paintings of Bay Area artists. It\u2019s one of several new pieces in the show inspired by Northern California. Curator Twyla Ruby selected a handful of others from di Rosa\u2019s massive collection of California art to provide additional, place-based artistic perspectives on the theme of time\u2019s passage.<\/p>\n

Several events planned around Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology: Trees, Time, and Technology will take visitors deeper, including a Jewish-themed tour and talk on Tu BiShvat, the celebration of nature and trees, on February 1st at 1pm, and a feminist-leaning one on March 7th at 2pm. On March 12th, Goldberg will be in conversation with Whitney Museum curator Christiane Paul. <\/p>\n

But at the center of it all will be the trees, always the trees.<\/p>\n

\u201cKnowing that the redwoods have been around for thousands of years before we were around and will be in the future\u2014is very grounding,\u201d says Shlain. \u201cGoing into nature puts things into a longer time scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

\/\/ \u2018Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology: Trees, Time, and Technology\u2019 is on exhibit from January 22nd through April 11th at the di Rosa SF, 1150 25th St. (Dogpatch); find more info and tickets for events at minnesotastreetproject.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Independently, Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg have each left an enviable mark on the universe of interdisciplinary creativity.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[2977,2308,71331,71327,71329,71328,71326,71330,101,103,102,104,27925,106,105,71325],"class_list":["post-141886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-sanfrancisco","tag-art","tag-art-exhibition","tag-art-museum","tag-di-rosa-center","tag-di-rosa-center-for-contemporary-art","tag-ken-goldberg","tag-new-art","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-art","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-tiffany-shlain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}