Burning Man stirs scholars
When the scholars get hold of a countercultural phenomenon, does that signal its impending end?
There will be an opportunity to assess that matter when the Bill Lane Center for the American West, a research institute at Stanford University, presents “Burning Man: Art and Technology,” a two-hour symposium on the festival of creativity and free-spirited fellowship that attracts thousands to the Nevada desert at the end of August for a multiday campout. The program, scheduled for Feb. 23, will be hosted at the de Young Museum, an event co-sponsor.
Speakers include Nora Atkinson, a curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s Renwick Gallery, who organized last year’s blockbuster exhibition “No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man”; Katherine K. Chen, a sociologist at the City College of New York who has studied the festival; Scott London, a Bay Area photographer who has delved deeply into the Burning Man phenomenon; and Fred Turner, a Stanford professor of communications who will deliver the keynote talk, “What Burning Man Does for Silicon Valley.”
Admission is free, but — just like the Burning Man event itself — you’ll have to register in advance. Fire dancing, presumably, will not be allowed in the museum auditorium.