About

JD Talasek

JD Talasek is a curator, researcher, and writer with an interest in exploring the intersection of art and science through collaborative and integrative work. He is the director of Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences (2101 Constitution Ave, NW, Washington DC), a program that is focused on the relationship between science, medicine, technology, and culture (www.cpnas.org) and he is hte editor-in-chief for Leonardo Journal (published by MIT).  Talasek is the creator and moderator for a monthly salon called DASER (DC Art Science Evening Rendezvous) held at the NAS - a series that he has hosted for over 13 years. Additionally, Talasek is the art advisor for Issues in Science and Technology Magazine co-published by Arizona State University and The National Academies. 

He was the creator and organizer of the international on-line symposium on Visual Culture and Bioscience and co-editor of the published transcripts (distributed by D.A.P., March 2009).  The second in this series of on-line symposia, Visual Culture and Evolution, was held from April 5 through April 14, 2010. 

He was on the faculty at Johns Hopkins University in the Museum Studies Master’s Program. Additionally, he has served on the Contemporary Art and Science Committee (CASC) at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and was a member of the board of directors for Leonardo: The International Society of Art, Science and Technology. 

Talasek has curated several exhibitions at the National Academy of Sciences including Imagining Deep Time (2014), Visionary Anatomies (toured through the Smithsonian Institution, 2004 - 2006), Absorption + Transmission: work by Mike and Doug Starn, The Tao of Physics: Photographs by Arthur Tress, Cycloids: Paintings by Michael Schultheis.  At the University of Delaware, he organized and curated Observations in an Occupied Wilderness: Photographs by Terry Falke and LightBox: the Visual AIDS Archive Project. 

Talasek holds an MFA in studio arts from the University of Delaware, an MA in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester, and BS in Photography from East Texas State University.  He was born in 1966 in Dallas, Texas and currently lives in Washington, D.C.