Radical Softness

Oct 15, 2025

Book cover of "Radical Softness: The Responsive Art of Janet Echelman," edited by Gloria Sutton with a foreword by Swizz Beatz. The cover features photographs of Echelman’s large-scale woven net sculptures — one in vivid pink and purple illuminated indoors, and another suspended over city streets against a blue sky. The back cover text describes Echelman’s global public artworks and the book’s focus on her interdisciplinary practice.

About

Artist Janet Echelman will discuss the new book, Radical Softness: The Responsive Art of Janet Echelman, in a conversation with author and contemporary art historian Gloria Sutton and contributor John Ochsendorf, MIT Professor and structural engineer.

Together, they'll explore the intersection of art, architecture, and responsive design in the urban landscape.

The MIT Museum's newest exhibition, Remembering the Future, is the culmination of the book's narrative which spans the past twenty-five years of Janet Echelman's monumentally scaled public sculptures using unlikely materials, from atomized water particles to engineered fiber fifteen times stronger than steel. She weaves ancient craft and computational modeling software into an utterly unique art form.

$5 General Admission

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MIT Museum website

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Thumbnail image: Sham Sthankiya/Office of the Arts