Gene Cultures at MIT Museum

Biotechnology from the Blue Flower was presented at the new MIT Museum in Cambridge, USA as part of Gene Cultures, opening on 2 October 2022. Installed in the Henri A. Termeer Gallery, the exhibition brought together artists whose work addresses genetic technologies and the social, cultural, and ethical questions they raise.

In that setting, Biotechnology from the Blue Flower sat within a wider public conversation about how biotechnology reshapes ideas of nature, intervention, and responsibility. The exhibition asked who gets to decide how transformative new genetic tools are used, and what kinds of questions must be asked before irreversible changes are made. May and Anna Dumitriu’s work contributed to that discussion by moving between plant biology, Romantic symbolism, digital imaging, and gene editing.

The MIT presentation also clarified how the work connects to May’s broader practice. Biotechnology is not treated as spectacle or as a simple marker of novelty, but as a way of thinking through memory, preservation, reconstruction, and the unstable status of natural forms once they are scanned, altered, or culturally reframed. In Gene Cultures, those concerns were placed within an institutional setting designed to invite public reflection as much as scientific curiosity.