Kelli Anderson, “This Book is a Camera” (2015). (Photo: Courtesy of the artist)
Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Visiting Artist Lecture: Kelli Anderson
Artist, designer and animator Kelli Anderson will deliver the Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Visiting Artist Lecture.
Known for reinventing commonplace objects in ways that disrupt audience expectations, artist, designer, and animator Anderson is the creator of — among other projects — “This Book is a Camera” (2015), a pop-up book that transforms into a working camera, and “This Book is a Planetarium” (2017), which explores how paper taps into larger phenomena of light, time, sound and mathematics.
About Kelli Anderson
Kelli Anderson uses design magic to connect people with the depth and possibility of the world.
Pushing the bounds of publishing, she created This Book is a Camera (MoMA)—which transforms into a working camera—and This Book is a Planetarium (Chronicle)—which houses paper devices (including a planetarium) and has sold more than 100,000 copies. Other projects include a viral paper record player and—with The Yes Men—a utopian counterfeited New York Times, which won the Ars Electronica Prix. Doctors have used the award-winning Tinybop Human Body app to communicate treatment in childrenʼs hospitals and to Indigenous Australians.
Clients include NPR, The New Yorker, the Guggenheim, MoMA, Apple, and The New York Times. Anderson has redesigned brands such as Russ & Daughters and Momofuku. She has exhibited internationally; her independent projects have been supported by the Japan Foundation, Exploratorium, Adobe, Center for Book Arts, MASS MoCA, ITP, and Letterform Archive.
Upcoming Public Lectures
Apr 15 at 5:30pm • Museum Lobby
Being and Becoming in Contemporary Chinese Art
This talk by Peggy Wang, associate professor of art history and Asian studies at Bowdoin College, addresses the conflicting pressures that artists in China confronted during the 1990s and early 2000s, including rapid urbanization and cultural globalization. Even as they navigated political constraints and deficits in resources, contemporary artists enacted productive strategies for making and exhibiting their art. This lecture foregrounds artists’ assertions of being and becoming, both as critical tactics for configuring identity and generative topics unto themselves. Wang will particularly examine how artists studied the vibrant dynamics of change through temporal, historical, and material dimensions in their art.
This lecture is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Looking Back Toward the Future: Contemporary Photography from China, on view at the Kemper Art Museum from February 27 to July 27, 2026.
Part of the Sam Fox School Public Lecture Series