Ben Neiditz

The region we now call Mexico and Central America once looked very different than it does today. For thousands of years distinct cultures inhabited the region, each with their own artistic traditions and languages. With over 200 artifacts, from monumental stone stelae to miniature gold ornaments, this gallery highlights these civilizations, their influences on one another and their connection to contemporary cultural practices.

Role: Management of production and installation

Penn Museum

Photography: Open Eyes Media

In the collection of the American Philosophical Society there is a drawing from the late 1700’s titled “Boat for pleasure or fishing parties on the Delaware.” This drawing was found among Benjamin Franklin’s papers and dates to a time when he was fascinated with innovations in boat design.

We attempted to bring this eccentric design to life, adhering as closely as possible to the sketch. The only deviations we made were done to allow the wind to move the sail without a sailor present.

Created in collaboration with Zach Fay for the exhibition Dr. Franklin, Citizen Scientist at the American Philosophical Society

Photography: Open Eyes Media

Treasures from the Rosenbach’s Collection is a planned long-term exhibition that will span the Rosenbach Museum’s galleries.

I created these renderings as part of the initial design process.

Exhibition design by Olivetree Design

The Megalonyx Jefersonii is a species of giant ground sloth that was endemic to North America and became extinct at the end of the last Ice Age around 10,000 years ago. In 1797 Thomas Jefferson presented a paper to the American Philosophical Society in which he incorrectly concluded that the claws of this sloth belonged to a giant lion. The species bears his name as an homage to his mistake.

I created this Megalonyx sculpture for the exhibition In Franklin’s Footsteps: 275 Years at the American Philosophical Society.

Photography: Open Eyes Media

I am currently working with the Portsmouth Abbey School in Portsmouth, Rhode Island on the redesign of the gallery space in their library. These views are from the digital model depicting the proposed design.

Through over 300 artifacts and four commissioned contemporary artworks these galleries focus both on how African material culture is produced and on how it came to be contained within Western museums.

Role: Management of production and installation

Penn Museum

Photography: Open Eyes Media

Fort Mifflin is a Revolutionary War era fort located immediately south of the confluence of the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers in Philadelphia. In 1867, after the end of the Civil War, construction was started on a concrete and earthen bulwark on the fort’s western side that was never completed. Today this overgrown section of the fort known as The High Battery is filled with detritus and crumbling structures whose origins are difficult to discern. It is a rich blend of colonial and post-industrial ruin.

The Ruins at High Battery consisted of many different interventions scattered throughout this landscape that ranged in scale from structures you could enter to small objects you could easily miss. The intent was to amplify the area’s strangeness and to provide visitors with an experience of disorientation and surprise.

Created for the 2013 Hidden City Festival in collaboration with Zach Webber

Newsworks

Atlas Obscura

Streets Dept

In May 2010, the “Tivoli Incursion,” a standoff between Jamaican security forces and a local drug trafficker and community leader wanted for extradition by the United States government, resulted in the death of at least 75 civilians in West Kingston on the island of Jamaica. This exhibition—part art installation, part memorial, and part call to action—sheds light on those events through video and audio footage featuring firsthand accounts of people directly impacted by the violence.

Role: Management of production and installation

Penn Museum

The Penn Museum’s Egyptian collection encompasses more than 50,000 artifacts that give insight into thousands of years of Ancient Egyptian history. This exhibition explores how these artifacts were excavated, how they came to the museum and how they are conserved and prepared for display.

Role: Management of production and installation

Penn Museum

Photography: Eric Sucar

These books were the primary written record of the Maya civilization. There are only a few of them still in existence since many were destroyed by the conquistadors in the 16th century. The surviving books are named for the cities where they are now located.

The Science Museum of Minnesota commissioned me to create these replicas - sixteen pages of the Dresden Codex and four pages from the Madrid Codex - to accompany their travelling exhibition Maya: Hidden Worlds Revealed. The original books are too fragile to travel.

Materials: Amate paper, plaster, acrylic paint

Science Museum of Minnesota

Our contemporary Global Positioning System is made possible by a constellation of many satellites orbiting the earth.
This sculpture is an approximation of one of these satellites.

It was installed at the American Philosophical Society for their exhibition Mapping A Nation: Shaping the Early American Republic.

Materials: Wood, gold mylar, steel tube, aluminum tape, various plastic parts, spray paint, printed aluminum composite panels

Photography: Open Eyes Media

The images in this exhibition were created using a variety of different technologies: digital microscopy, radiography, micro CT-scans and magnetic gradiometry. Through these different techniques archaeologists and anthropologists are able to extract information from artifacts, specimens and landscapes to answer questions about the past. Throughout the exhibit images were paired with the objects that they came from.

Role: Management of production and installation

Penn Museum

Photography: Open Eyes Media

This display of objects was completed for the opening of the Wistar Institute’s new research facility in 2014. Medical tools and anatomical models from the institute’s collection celebrate its history and tell the story of its founders.

Role: 3D design, management of production and installation

Wistar Institute

This 4000 year old mummy was the centerpiece of a travelling exhibition on loan from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Museum in Urumqi, China. The exhibition was supposed to open at the Penn Museum in February of 2011 but two weeks before the opening the Chinese government declared that the museum would not be allowed to put the real mummy on display. I created this replica which was installed in its place when the exhibition opened.

Materials: Papier-mache, celluclay, dirt, acrylic paint, raw felt, fabric, various materials

Created for the exhibition Secrets of the Silk Road, at the Penn Museum.

New York Times

Philadelphia Inquirer

This exhibition contains over 200 objects from more than 85 different tribes accompanied by interactive multimedia elements. Ancient artifacts and contemporary art pieces, archival video and documentary footage connect the history of indigenous communities to their present struggles for independence.

Role: Design, fabrication and installation of AV cabinetry and case internal elements

Penn Museum

This exhibition focused on the ongoing destruction of cultural heritage in the Middle East by showing what’s at stake—the rich history of the region and the diversity of its people—and what’s being done to prevent the loss of this history and cultural identity. Art and artifacts from the Penn Museum’s collection told stories of the cultures of Syria and Iraq through time. Contemporary artwork from Issam Kourbaj, a Syrian artist based in Cambridge, UK, provided an art intervention—a modern-day response to the artifacts and themes.

Role: Management of production and installation

Penn Museum

The Fairmount Water Works was internationally famous in its time as both a feat of advanced engineering and as a tourist attraction.
Perched atop the Fairmount dam, Mechanical Flotilla was intended as an homage to this blend of spectacle and function that the water works delivered, but on a comically small scale. While the water works grandly displayed cutting edge technology, we hoped to draw attention to the simplicity with which the flow of the river can be converted into movement.

Created in collaboration with Zach Webber for the Flow Festival

Fairmount Water Works

This animatronic installation draws on the 18th century introduction of the Venus flytrap to European science.

Created in collaboration with Zach Webber for the travelling exhibition Bartram’s Boxes Remix organized by The Museum for Art in Wood

Philadelphia Inquirer

With the historic King Midas as its guiding theme, this exhibition illuminated the relationships that his kingdom maintained with surrounding kingdoms and city states including Lydia, Persia, Assyria, Urartu and Greece, among others.

Through a special agreement signed between the Republic of Turkey and the University of Pennsylvania, Turkey loaned the Penn Museum more than one hundred artifacts gathered from four museums (Ankara, Gordion, Istanbul, and Antalya). This loan made possible a uniquely comprehensive and elaborate exhibition that also featured rarely seen objects from the Penn Museum's own collections.

Role: 3D design, management of production and installation

Penn Museum

Initially created strictly for sculptural purposes this corpse has had many lives.

It has been used in museums as a promotional and educational tool to teach about both mummification and forensic anthropology.

Photography: Alyssa Kaminski

An animatronic installation triggered by viewers movements.

Created for the 2011 Collage Arts Festival in collaboration with Zach Webber