The Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State is hosting a new exhibition titled “Structures, Systems and Society: Work at the Interface of Art and Engineering,” on view through December 21 in the Barbara and Lee Maimon Teaching Gallery. Developed in collaboration with the College of Engineering and the Leonhard Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Education, the show features works from the museum’s collection alongside pieces by Penn State faculty, including curators Sarah Zappe, Joseph Cusumano, and Benjamin Fehl. The exhibition is organized around three themes—Structures, Systems, and Society—and aims to highlight the creative and cultural intersections between art and engineering.
This exhibition matters because it challenges traditional disciplinary boundaries in education and research, encouraging interdisciplinary thinking that can lead to more innovative, human-centered solutions. By bringing together art and engineering in a museum setting, it offers students and the public a model for how creative practices can inform responsible engineering and how collaboration across fields can enrich both artistic and scientific inquiry.