Arthur Ganson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arthur Ganson is a renowned kinetic sculptor. Ganson makes mechanical art demonstrations and Rube Goldberg machines with existential themes. Ganson has held residencies in science museums, collaborated with the Studebaker Movement Theatre, and been featured in one-man shows at MIT Museum, Harvard’s Carpenter Center, the DeCordova Museum, and the Ricco/Maresca Gallery in New York. He has a permanent installation at the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He was a MIT artist-in-residence. and some of his work is on permanent display at the Gestural Engineering exhibit at MIT Museum in Boston, Massachusetts.

Ganson was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1955, and got a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of New Hampshire in 1978.

Ganson is the inventor of the Toobers & Zots, a construction toyset of bendable foam pieces in abstract shapes that can be assembled into almost anything. The themes of his work explore existential ideas and have been compared to the plays of Samuel Beckett.^[1] Some of his machines work to simply oil themselves, other times his extremely elaborate machines do nothing at all.

Ganson appeared as a character on an episode of PBS's animated television show "Arthur on December 24, 2003.