Janet Echelman

Janet Echelman sculpts at the scale of buildings and city blocks. Echelman’s work defies categorization, as it intersects disciplinary boundaries, from Sculpture, Architecture, and Urban Design, to Material Science, Structural & Aeronautical Engineering, Computer Science, and performance. Echelman’s art transforms with wind and light, and shifts from being “an object you look at, into an experience you can get lost in.”

Using unlikely materials from atomized water particles to engineered fiber fifteen times stronger than steel, Echelman combines ancient craft with computational design software to create artworks that have become focal points for urban life on five continents, from Singapore, Sydney, Shanghai, and Santiago, to Beijing, Boston, New York and London. Permanent works in Porto (Portugal), Gwanggyo (South Korea), Vancouver, San Francisco, West Hollywood, Phoenix, Eugene, Greensboro, Philadelphia, Seattle, Columbus (OH) and St. Petersburg (FL) transform daily with colored light.

Curiosity defines Janet Echelman’s nonlinear educational path. After graduating from Harvard College, she lived in a Balinese village for 5 years, then completed separate graduate programs in Painting and in Psychology. A recipient of an honorary Doctorate from Tufts University, Echelman has taught at MIT, Harvard and Princeton Universities.

Her TED talk, "Taking Imagination Seriously," has been translated into 35 languages with more than two million views. Recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, Harvard Loeb Fellowship, Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellowship, and Fulbright Sr. Lectureship, Echelman received the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award in Visual Arts, honoring “the greatest innovators in America today.” In popular culture, Oprah ranked Echelman’s work #1 on her List of 50 Things That Make You Say Wow!, and Echelman was named an Architectural Digest Innovator for "changing the very essence of urban spaces."

"Radical Softness: The Responsive Art of Janet Echelman," published in September 2025, is a 288-page visual compendium of Echelman's oeuvre which accompanies a traveling mid-career museum retrospective.