Josiah McElheny and Tavares Strachan in Conversation

Josiah McElheny, a past Wexner Center Artist Residency Award winner who has also presented solo exhibitions at the Wex, returns for a conversation with Tavares Strachan that focuses on their research interests and considers the impacts of various fields on the human experience. Kris Paulsen, associate professor and chair of Undergraduate Studies of History of Art at Ohio State, will moderate.
 
McElheny will discuss his long-term collaborations with David Weinberg, distinguished university professor in the Department of Astronomy at Ohio State. They started working together in 2004 during McElheny’s artist residency at the Wex and have studied connections between contemporary art, astronomy, and scientific inquiry through projects such as Island Universe, which was shown at Stanford University’s Cantor Arts Center and End of Modernity, which was presented at the Wexner Center.

Strachan, whose solo exhibition The Day Tomorrow Began is currently on view at the Columbus Museum of Art at the Pizzuti, will reflect on historical undercurrents in contemporary moments. This reflection will be focused on his work The Encyclopedia of Invisibility, looking at 19th- and 20th-century Arctic explorer Matthew Henson, histories of exploration, questions of visibility and recognition, and more.
 
This talk is part of Confluence: Public Art, Experimentation, and Engaged Communities, a collaborative endeavor between Columbus Museum of Art and The Ohio State University taking place October 8–9, 2026. Learn more about the artist talk with Janet Echelman and Ohio State Professor Emeritus Ann Hamilton on Thursday.

IMAGE CAPTION
From left to right: Josiah McElheny, An End to Modernity, 2005; copyright Josiah McElheny; photo: Sven Kahn. Installation view of Tavares Strachan: The Day Tomorrow Began; courtesy of Columbus Museum of Art at The Pizzuti; photo: Luke Stettner.