>> JARED BOWEN: I'm Jared Bowen.

Coming up on Open Studio-- the new M.I.T.

Museum welcomes visitors back to the future with open arms-- robotic arms, that is.

Plus, celebrating 200 years of Frederick Law Olmsted, the man who gave Boston a gem of a public park system: the Emerald Necklace.

Then, how Dean Mitchell uses his paintings to find honesty and humanity.

And our weekly roundup of all things arts and culture.

It's all now on Open Studio.

♪ ♪ First up, artificial intelligence, robotics, gene sequencing-- the stuff of headlines, science fiction, sometimes even our worst fears.

It's all on view at the brand-new M.I.T.

Museum, a place where the latest scientific advancements fill galleries, but only really work with your input.

On the third floor of the new M.I.T.

Museum, there's a robotics lab-- and not for show.

Ph.D. students like Yanwei Wang staff it, compiling research from visitors like me willing to sit down for an experiment, collecting data about how the robot works with me.

>> The idea is human is going to teach this robot to do a motion.

>> BOWEN: A simple task-- guiding the robot to move a block from one side of the table to the other.

But then I'm asked to disrupt it.

>> Okay, now you can push it a little bit, gently.

You can sort of push it back... >> BOWEN: The goal here is to teach robots to operate alongside humans in settings like a factory, places where they're typically cordoned off.

>> We want to show that robotics are inherently safe.

>> BOWEN: There are people who fear that robots may take over manufacturing, they may take over the world in some regard.

We don't want a future where robots sort of replace human jobs.

And that's why building this trust, for humans to trust robots to be a reliable partner is so important.

>> BOWEN: This is one of myriad exhibits that make this space a museum of the now, says director John Durant.

>> We're here to turn M.I.T.

inside out.

We want people to understand what contemporary research and innovation are all about and what they mean for everyday life.

>> BOWEN: The M.I.T.

Museum recently re-opened in a new building on the school's Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus.

Directly across from Google, it's deliberately centered in the heart of one of the world's chief innovation hubs.

So while you'll find a history of M.I.T.

benchmarks here like early computing systems, much of the focus is on the science advancing our world.

>> A great deal of the research that's done today is done with public expenditure, taxpayer dollars.

The public deserves to know what's being done with their money.

>> BOWEN: And it's all within reach here-- the starshade petal that will allow NASA to detect exoplanets; part of the machine used to sequence the human genome; a prototype of the LIGO detector that measured what Einstein could only predict in his theory of relativity.

All triumphs of scientific ingenuity.

But then, there are the pursuits that raise ethical eyebrows.

>> When might it be appropriate to go in and permanently change the genetic structure of living things in the wild to try and alleviate diseases-- things like Lyme disease.

>> BOWEN: To answer those questions, the M.I.T.

Museum has invited artists to interrogate innovation with artwork and installations.

Like artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg imagining the future pig: bred to be the size of a cow, to have colorful coats, or for an altogether different use.

>> Altering the genetic structure of, for example, pigs, so that in principle, their organs could be used for transplantation into humans.

Do we think that's okay?

Is it safe?

Is it ethical?

>> If people walk out of here with more questions than they came in with, I think that's, that's a good thing.

>> BOWEN: Especially as it relates to artificial intelligence, says Lindsay Bartholomew, the museum's exhibit and experience developer.

We sat down in front of the speech President Nixon delivered in 1969 when the moon landing ended in tragedy.

>> Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

> BOWEN: That never happened.

>> It didn't happen, right.

The... President Nixon had two speeches written for him-- one if the moon landing succeeded, and one if the moon landing failed.

He never gave the failed speech.

Until a couple of artists that we worked with, Fran Panetta and Halsey Burgund, with support from the Center for Advanced Virtuality here at M.I.T., basically made Nixon give that speech using A.I.

>> BOWEN: I got right up on that screen thinking that I would be able to detect something.

I could figure out maybe where the audio cuts are.

I could see the digital manipulation or animation, whatever they did.

I couldn't see anything.

>> Yeah, it's really, really well done.

What I think is really interesting about this is it just invites the question that I think we all have been considering more lately of can technology affect what's real?

Who gets to decide what's real?

>> BOWEN: It's also here where art and A.I.

coalesce, or collide, depending on where you come down.

Visitors are invited to sit down and co-author a poem with artificial intelligence software-- just as others have done in a river of poems that runs overhead.

It prompts you to choose a mood.

We went with "inspiring."

And a title.

Mine was pointed: "The Purity of Artists."

The machine sends up the first line, and then it's a volley of verbiage.

>> So We've gone from kind of a fire metaphor to a weaving metaphor.

(both chuckle) >> BOWEN (chuckling): It likes its metaphors.

>> It does like its metaphors.

So how does it feel as you're doing this, do you feel like you're being kind of supported in your artistic process?

>> BOWEN: I do.

There is an intellectual rigor to this, to try...

I feel like I'm trying to keep up with the A.I.

>> So we start out thinking "what does it mean for machines to be creative?"

>> BOWEN: Mm.

>> We end up learning a little bit about what it means for us to be creative.

>> BOWEN: A few lines later, our co-authored poem floats off overhead.

And in this museum filled with technology that has changed the nature of humanity, the nature of art and artist suddenly blurs-- line by line.

♪ ♪ Next, Frederick Law Olmstead, the famed landscape designer of New York's Central Park and Boston's Emerald Necklace, is receiving a fresh look on his 200th birthday.

As we approach Thanksgiving, we're giving thanks for the seeds that he planted.

So we're taking another look at our walk through his legacy, which we first took last spring.

>> Where we are now is called the Rock Garden.

He creates these places here that are smaller scale than what he created in other places.

>> BOWEN: He is Frederick Law Olmsted, and this is the Brookline, Massachusetts, home that became his hub of landscape design in the late 1800s.

He spent the final 12 years of his career here, and his architectural philosophy was unwavering.

>> He wanted to create a natural environment with intentional design.

But he wanted the person coming into that environment not knowing that it was designed.

It was the art to conceal the art.

>> BOWEN: Olmsted is considered the father of landscape architecture in America, an endeavor he launched after a career as a journalist; after managing a gold mine; and after co-designing New York's Central Park.

Jason Newman is the superintendent of the Olmsted National Historic Site.

>> We call this a place of places.

Because what happened here was the design of so many other places around the country.

We have the Buffalo park system, we have the Louisville park system, were created here within these walls.

>> BOWEN: Olmsted named the home Fairsted and it contains roughly a million documents produced by Olmsted and his firm's successors, including his sons.

They correspond to some 5,000 projects the firm ultimately produced, making parks part of everyday living.

>> That helped to save the Republic during the time of social upheaval during the Civil War.

And so it was important, I think, for the country to come together through different means, but also through the creation of these large public spaces.

>> People watching may think, well, a park is a park.

What's the difference?

>> We have the tendency to take them for granted and not realize that a decision was made that this land be protected and be for the public.

>> BOWEN: Karen Mauney-Brodek is president of the Emerald Necklace Conservancy.

The Necklace is a system of parks Olmsted spent nearly 20 years designing, beginning in 1878.

It stretches from Dorchester's Franklin Park to the Charles River.

>> He really designed with nature.

He used the land forms, the way that the water would flow to create systems that were incredibly resilient.

>> BOWEN: Olmsted designed paths for people to escape the city's unrelenting grind.

He crafted the Back Bay Fens to stem a public health crisis by countering the flow of sewage.

He devised open spaces as a way to integrate people from different walks onto common fields.

All sound familiar?

It's why the conservancy is one of a number of groups celebrating his bicentennial with the initiative Olmsted Now.

>> He sort of created an American vernacular, but we need to expand on it.

There also are parts of the city that don't have as much green space as they should have.

We want to make sure that we are uplifting folks that haven't had a voice or have been specifically kept out of decisions, spaces.

>> Olmsted was making parks for people.

He was not making parks for elites.

>> BOWEN: Ted Landsmark's career bears some of the DNA of Olmsted's own, blending civil rights advocacy with decades-long work in architecture and urban planning.

>> Too often we find that people of large economic means are dominating the way we think about parks and open spaces.

But what Olmsted did, in a very radical way in his time, was to say that parks and open spaces should be for everyone.

>> BOWEN: Boston is in the midst of another building boom.

With that come rising home prices, gentrification, and segregation.

So part of the Olmsted Now effort is to bring the city's traditionally overlooked neighborhoods together to plan the future of parks.

>> Olmsted intrinsically increased the diversity of the city and the way people come together to share their cultures and what they know of each other, to eat meals together and to play games together and to come together in ways that are non-threatening.

>> BOWEN: It's why, Landsmark says, a very literal common ground is vital.

And if past parks are prologue, they can be magical too.

>> The joy of the Olmsted network, I think, is that in traversing it, one is constantly finding something new and something magical and something that inspires one to think very differently about oneself in a natural environment.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Early in his career, artist Dean Mitchell decided that he wanted his art to make a difference.

Using his watercolors, he challenges assumptions about race and class.

♪ ♪ >> When I was a kid, I experienced racism very early on.

And it's an irony that I used to pray if I could do anything with my work, it would help us heal those wounds of racism and segregation.

A lot of these things have shaped my sensibility about what I do.

So a lot of it is not just because I think it's interesting in terms of light and this and that and shadow, which does interest me.

But the main overture of about the work is about poverty and the marginalization of people, and how those spaces affect our whole sense of self in a space.

That's been just a part of who I am.

This art thing, however you want to describe it, is a huge part of my life.

And so, I want it to mean something.

If I can change the world in any way, it would be to help break down certain social constructs that I think are detrimental to us as human beings.

And there are plenty of them.

(chuckles) ♪ ♪ >> My name is Matt Cutter.

I'm with Cutter & Cutter Fine Art in St. Augustine, Florida, and I'm also a painter.

We've got a good track record: over ten years of selling hundreds of paintings from Dean.

So, I think he's a very strong, worthy artist, and I do think he stops people in their tracks, and it's very contemplative.

He's not grabbing you with the brightest color.

He's not grabbing you with bells and whistles.

He's grabbing you in a different way.

He's asking you to like, come in very slowly, examine what's going on, feel that nuance.

And that's what he brings to the table.

So if you're 30 feet away, you would say that's realism.

And it is, it conveys that emotion.

When you look really closely at how he's laid down the watercolor layers, there's a lot of abstraction.

There's a lot going on with the design.

What he does, he plays with this dark and light and everything, in my opinion, with Dean's work is keyed in on a strong design, that sets up everything for the painting.

♪ ♪ >> Dean Mitchell is beyond that of a master.

If you had one where you said, "This is apprentice, and this is a master," well the apprentice learns how to do a this or a that.

And then once they're able to demonstrate that, then they say, "Oh, okay, now you're a master."

Dean Mitchell is an enigma.

Dean Mitchell was born to do what he does.

♪ ♪ When I look at Dean Mitchell's work, I do see science.

I do see philosophy, I do see religion.

Because some of those pieces, like "Rowena"-- I mean, you see that particular piece, that is a religious piece.

That is an icon, that is an actual Mary that you say, "Oh my God, she speaks of humanity."

Where in the world would someone painting like a Andrew Wyeth and in some cases better than Andrew Wyeth come from?

And therein, I think, lies the spiritual quality.

Because if you look at Dean's background, Dean achieved not because of, but in spite of.

"In spite of" is when God takes place.

Therein lies the miracle.

♪ ♪ >> I was raised by my grandmother from 11 months old.

And so, I was sort of a highly active child.

And so I would often walk to town with her, you know, 'cause I grew up in the panhandle of Florida in a little town called Quincy.

And I had no idea of the kind of wealth that was in Quincy, because we basically stayed in the Black community.

A lot of us-- when we first got our first bikes, we would ride over in the area and we would see these huge mansions.

And so, I began to look at the wealth discrepancy.

And I said, "How can somebody have a house that big?"

Really didn't, you know, didn't really understand it.

But I think through the years, as you become more educated, more socialized, you began to recognize how you fit into the social structure or social order of things.

And then when Martin Luther King started emerging on the scene, we would watch him on television.

So, a lot of these things have shaped my sensibility about what I do, because I do a lot of things.

A lot of the environments that I do are a window into poverty, and a window into that psychological space in which I emerged out of.

♪ ♪ This teacher I had, Tom Harris, who... there was four of us who were really interested in art, and he introduced us to local art competitions.

And so we were often the only Black people at these shows with Mr. Harris and his wife, who were Caucasian.

>> And I called it the crucible of competition, (chuckling): you know?

Which can be good or bad, because it puts pressure on kids.

♪ ♪ He was even as focused then as he is now, but there was so many negatives.

A lot of it was the black-white thing.

He paints what he wants to paint, because he feels the need in here to make a visual statement about what's going on.

And that's the strength of Dean Mitchell's painting.

Half of his focus and intensity is based on... this is, what I'm doing is... is extremely important.

And it's never been done before.

And whenever or however, whatever the recognition is, I have to do it my way.

Which to me is almost a definition of what art is and what art's supposed to be.

>> I will be gone at some point.

But what I leave, will it really make the world better in some ways and make us examine our own human behavior toward one another?

>> He didn't paint to sell.

Okay, that sounds ridiculous, because he had to make a living.

He painted because it's something he had to do and something he had to say.

>> He wants people to, like, examine this work on a deep level.

So I do think he's very important now.

And I think his work will, will be very important 100 years from now.

>> I think art has a way of mirroring back to us what we become.

And it also provides us history, in which we can reflect back on, to not keep repeating the same mistakes.

It's that kind of troubling world that feeds my passion to try to figure out how to derail some of the destructive behavior.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: It's time for Arts This Week, your download of the latest arts and culture events in and around Boston.

♪ ♪ The paintings of Frank Bowling hum-- not literally, of course, but with an electric glow.

They're like neon beacons that draw us in for their intoxicating mix of color and texture and form.

Born in British Guyana, Bowling established himself as a successful artist in London before setting his sights on New York.

This was 1966.

New York was riding high as the center of the art world after World War II.

Bowling burrowed into the center of it all, quickly making a name for himself, just as he'd done in London.

The works he made in New York from 1966 to '75 are on view in the new Museum of Fine Arts Boston show, "Frank Bowling's Americas."

And it's the first show of these paintings in more than 40 years.

We see his map motif, in which he floats Southern Hemisphere continents and countries in radiant seas.

How he enters the civil rights conversation, and then moves into his own geology, unleashing rivers of running paint that, as he described, poured, spilled, and dripped down the canvas.

When dried, they're a many mountainous terrain all their own.

Trust me, you'll be bowled over by Frank Bowling.

♪ ♪ >> And you're not to associate with him again.

>> What do you mean?

Why?

>> I think you know what I mean.

>> BOWEN: Armageddon Time, a new film written and directed by James Gray launches as a coming-of-age fable in 1980s Queens, New York.

We're in the classroom with Paul Graff, a sixth grader, more interested in drawing than doing anything more academically productive.

What unfolds, though, is a glance into this country's class and racial divides.

When Ronald Reagan, on the verge of his presidency, theorized his could be the generation to see Armageddon time.

Paul's only friend is a Black boy.

But at home, Paul's parents, played by Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong, have zero qualms about expressing their racist thoughts.

At the new private school where Paul is meant to straighten up, the class condescension is stifling, and a classmate uses the N-word with the same nonchalance with which he might pick up a tennis racket.

Paul's is an environment of disregard, but he is also Jewish, and his grandfather, played by Anthony Hopkins, argues the hatred and violence that devastated their family during the Holocaust should fuel Paul's kindness.

>> Someone's bugging you?

What is it?

>> Sometimes kids say bad words about the Black kids.

>> Who's that?

>> Somebody from my old school.

>> Did they ever come to your house?

>> What do you do when that happens?

>> Well, obviously nothing, of course.

>> You think that's smart?

>> BOWEN: It's all autobiographical, the director's own unvarnished look at his family and community.

But importantly, it's also a micro-level depiction of how bigotry is fomented.

Extraordinarily well-written, acted, and charted, Armageddon Time unwinds with a chilling naturalism, making it a cold cinematic slap.

♪ ♪ Australian artist Wendy Yu is all about elevation, literally installing her work high, but also in raising up artists.

For her latest installation, commissioned by Boston's Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, Yu's projections of street dancers prove to be a mesmerizing swirl on the side of the Federal Reserve Bank.

It's called "As We Rise," and just as she's done in major cities throughout the world, she collaborated with a local dance company.

Here, it was The Flavor Continues.

She adapts the street dancers' individual expression into an entirely different expression of art.

It casts the dancers high atop the city, while vestiges of their choreography descend back to the street in a painterly flow.

You can view it through November, starting every night at dusk.

♪ ♪ To what extent does language translate to one's identity, to a sense of belonging or our connection to one another?

That's the root exploration of English, a play now on stage at SpeakEasy Stage Company.

>> Given a new name, the smallest sacrifices can open our world.

>> Marjan is not hard to say.

>> The rewards are very huge... >> Don't you think people can do us the courtesy of learning our names?

>> BOWEN: Written by Iranian playwright Sanaz Toossi, It's set in an English language learning classroom in 2008 Iran.

There are four students: young to old, novice to proficient and led by a teacher who's proudly set aside the place of Farsi in her life to drill down on her students.

Language, we're reminded here, is power, and it's personal.

To varying degrees, the students are conflicted about what learning English means.

What are they stripping away, leaving behind, or betraying?

Especially, as for some, it represents sacrificing their Iranianess for the language of a dominant culture, one with which Iran has long been in contention.

There are compelling, intriguing questions that linger long after the show.

The characters less so, their sentence fragments rather than the paragraphs we need to fully access the play's more dramatic moments or where it all ends.

♪ ♪ Now my pick for what to catch next week.

The holiday season is upon us as Boston Ballet's Nutcracker returns to the Opera House.

Its production is at once lush and sweet and comic, and it plays straight through New Year's Eve.

That's our Arts and Culture download.

I'll see you here and at The Nutcracker next week.

And that is all for this edition of Open Studio.

Next week, artist Rosamond Purcell and her singular vision for photography.

You can always visit us online at GBH.org/OpenStudio.

And you can see us first on YouTube.com/gbhnews.

Remember to follow us on Instagram and Twitter @OpenStudioGBH.

I'm @TheJaredBowen.

Every Friday, Jim Braude and Margery Eagan offer up live performances on BPR out of our studio at the Boston Public Library.

So we leave you now with classical pianist Black Bach, performing his piece, "The Hustle is Real."

I'm Jared Bowen, thanks for watching.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪