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The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) will host a series of Strandbeest pop-ups in advance of the museum’s fall headlining exhibition, Strandbeest: The Dream Machines of Theo Jansen. Learn more about these internationally acclaimed kinetic sculptures at pem.org/strandbeest.

Each of PEM’s four pop-up Strandbeest walking events takes place in the area’s most iconic settings and features two Strandbeest creatures called Animaris Ordis.

SCHEDULE

Saturday, August 22 | 10 am – noon | Crane Beach, Ipswich

Friday, August 28 | 11 am – 1 pm |Boston City Hall Plaza, Boston

Friday, August 28 | 4:30 – 7 pm |Rose Kennedy Greenway / Dewey Square, Boston

Thursday, September 10 | 3 – 7 pm | MIT Media Lab, 75 Amherst St., Cambridge

3 – 5 pm | Panel discussion with Strandbeest creator Theo Jansen, PEM Curator of the Present Tense Trevor Smith, and Neri Oxman, associate professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab | Panel discussion will be webcast | Join the discussion on Twitter: #MLTalks.

5:30 – 7 pm | Strandbeest walk on plaza outside the MIT Media Lab

STRANDBEEST: THE DREAM MACHINES OF THEO JANSEN:

PEM presents the first major American exhibition of Theo Jansen’s famed kinetic sculptures. Dynamic and interdisciplinary, Jansen’s Strandbeests (“beach animals”) blur the lines between art, science and storytelling. The exhibition celebrates the thrill of the Strandbeests’ unique locomotion as well as the processes that have driven their evolutionary development on the Dutch seacoast. The kinetic sculptures are accompanied by artist sketches, facilitated demonstrations of the creatures’ complex ambulatory systems, a hall of “fossils” and photography by Lena Herzog.

The exhibition debuts at PEM from September 19, 2015, through January 3, 2016, before traveling to the Chicago Cultural Center and San Francisco’s Exploratorium. See the Strandbeests in motion at pem.org/strandbeest and join the digital conversation using #strandbeest.

THEO JANSEN:

The artist first came to prominence in 1980 when he flew a “UFO” across the skies of Delft, Holland. For the past 20 years Jansen has been creating and exhibiting his dramatic Strandbeests. He has appeared on multiple TED Talks, been the subject of a profile in The New Yorker and shown his work in Asia, Europe and now the United States. A trained physicist, Jansen’s Strandbeests bridge the gap between art and engineering, attracting a broad array of followers: from engineers, biologists and philosophers, to environmentalists, writers and makers.

EXHIBITION CREDIT: Audemars Piguet is the national sponsor for Strandbeest: The Dream Machines of Theo Jansen. Mondriaan Fund provided generous support for the exhibition. The AMG Foundation and Eaton Vance Investment Counsel sponsored the exhibition. The Dutch Culture USA program by the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York and Carolyn and Peter S. Lynch and The Lynch Foundation also provided support. Strandbeest is made possible in part by supporters of PEM’s Present Tense initiative: Terry and Dick Albright, Mr. and Mrs. C. Richard Carlson, Mr. Alfred D. Chandler III and The Reverend Susan Esco Chandler, and Fay Chandler. The East India Marine Associates of the Peabody Essex Museum also provided support.