Four distinguished scholars from Vanderbilt will participate on a panel debating the ethics of healthy people taking prescription drugs to enhance brain power. The panel is the seventh and final project  of the year-long program "Art Makes Place" and will take place on Thursday, Sept. 17, 6:30 - 7:30 p.m., at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.  Art Makes Place is contemporary artists making community-oriented, temporary and performance-based art for public spaces, or AMP.

Vanderbilt panelists include: 

• Director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society and Professor of Law and Pediatrics, Ellen Wright Clayton, is an internationally respected leader in the field of law and genetics.
• Associate Professor of Law and Philosophy, Nita A. Farahany, focuses on the legal, philosophical, and social issues arising from biosciences, particularly related to behavioral genetics and neuroscience.
• Howard Kirshner is a professor of Neurology, Psychiatry, and Hearing and Speech Sciences. Board certified in vascular neurology, he is also vice chair for the Department of Neurology and director of the Vanderbilt Stroke Center.
• Interested in the social and cultural impacts of technological change, Chancellor's Professor of History Michael Bess, is currently working on his fourth book entitled Icarus 2.0: Technology, Ethics, and the Quest to Build a Better Human.

Adrienne Outlaw, whose work is about bioethical issues developing with the rapid advancement of technology, will moderate the panel. Outlaw exhibits internationally in public art collections, galleries and museums. She holds an MLAS from Vanderbilt University and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The event at the Frist Center is free and open to the public. Admission to the galleries, which are open until 9 pm, is free that evening for all university students.

Outlaw considers the talk at the Frist Center as the first public phase of her piece titled "The Enhancer." During the summer she met with small groups of teenagers, college students and professionals to discuss ideas behind the work. In these smaller talks, many people admitted taking or knowing someone who has taken non-prescribed drugs such as Ritalin to help them focus. The Frist Center talk kicks off the public phase of her project. The next phases include a conversation about drugs and creativity, an informative and participatory blog, 1,000 brain-shaped, hand-held viewfinders distributed to the public, and an interactive installation for the AMP exhibit at the Nashville Public Library, which opens Oct. 14.     

Adrienne Outlaw, whose work is about bioethical issues developing with the rapid advancement of technology, will moderate the panel. Outlaw exhibits internationally in public art collections, galleries and museums. She holds an MLAS from Vanderbilt University and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The event at the Frist Center is free and open to the public. Admission to the galleries, which are open until 9 pm, is free that evening for all university students.

 

Outlaw considers the talk at the Frist Center as the first public phase of her multi-part artwork titled "The Enhancer." During the summer she met with small groups of teenagers, college students and professionals to discuss ideas behind the work. In these smaller talks, many people admitted taking or knowing someone who has taken non-prescribed drugs such as Ritalin to help them focus. The Frist Center talk kicks off the public phase of her project. The next phases include a conversation about drugs and creativity, an informative and participatory blog, 1,000 brain-shaped, hand-held viewfinders distributed to the public, and an interactive installation for the AMP exhibit at the Nashville Public Library, which opens Oct. 17.    

There will be a follow-up to the Frist Center conversation 4 -5 pm on Thursday, Oct. 8, at the Nashville Public Library downtown branch. That panel will consist of writer Michael Sims and Vanderbilt faculty members John Greer, professor medicine in hematology and stem cell transplant; Jeffrey Schall, Ingram Professor of Neuroscience and Elizabeth Heitman from the The Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society.

The Frist Center and public library events are part of an artwork Outlaw is making for AMP. Encouraging partnership between artists and the public, AMP projects address the artist's role in society and how artists help to create a sense of place and identity within a society. Projects, which began last fall, have each started with a lecture/workshop with public school students, continued with participation from Vanderbilt University and the larger Nashville community, and result in a temporary artwork presented in public spaces throughout Nashville. All AMP projects can be viewed Oct. 17, 2009 – March 26, 2010 at an art exhibition at Nashville Public Library main downtown gallery.

AMP is organized by the Nashville Cultural Arts Project and has as its collaborative partners Metro Nashville Public Schools, Frist Center for the Visual Arts and Vanderbilt University. AMP funding and assistance comes from Metro Nashville Arts Commission, Vanderbilt University, Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation and FCVA. For more information, visit NCAP.     

Contact: myVU, myvu@vanderbilt.edu