Kinney Center Announces 2025-26 Artists in Residence and Visiting Scholars

The Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies has announced three Artists in Residence and two Visiting Scholars for 2025-26.

As Artists in Residence, Ira Klein, Missy Dunaway and Lauren Levato Coyne will engage in the Renaissance of the Earth project, whose mission is to revolutionize what it means to engage the early modern past with questions about our environmental future.

Each artist will spend time in residence at the Center, developing original work that draws upon the Renaissance period as a wellspring for contemporary thought, ecological reflection and creative innovation.

Klein, Spring 2026 artist in residence, will explore this question by pairing Renaissance-era musical motifs through a modern lens, composing new works that reflect historical echoes in contemporary sound. A Brooklyn-based guitarist, composer, and educator, he is celebrated for his expressive compositions that bridge Middle Eastern music, American folk traditions, and contemporary improvisation. With performances at institutions including Harvard, Yale, and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and collaborations with luminaries including Claire Chase and Kevin Barry, Klein's music carries an intellectual and emotional resonance.

Dunaway, interdisciplinary artist based in Portland, Maine, creates work that blends painting with research into literature, history and nature. A Fulbright Fellow and author of "The Traveling Artist: A Visual Journal," Dunaway has exhibited internationally and collaborated with institutions including the Folger Shakespeare Library. During her Summer 2026 residency, Dunaway will explore the folklore and mythologies surrounding birds in the early modern period to engage with today's conversations around environmental conservation and species symbolism, drawing new connections between Renaissance imagination and modern ecological concerns about the winged creatures who bear witness to our changing planet.

Levato Coyne is a queer, interdisciplinary artist, writer and STEAM educator who explores the intersections of natural history, myth and identity. Their award-winning writing and artwork have appeared in major publications and institutions, including International Sculpture Magazine, the Chicago Cultural Center and The Field Museum. At the Kinney Center, Levato Coyne will conduct new research for a project called "Longing for Strangeness: Gardens, Monsters, and Other Third Nature Fables," a multidisciplinary exploration of Renaissance and post-human ecologies that speaks to how nature has been imagined, feared, and mythologized across time. Their exhibit will open in Fall 2026.

The Kinney Center also welcomes Katharine Owens and Cecilia Lim as Visiting Scholars this fall.

Owens, professor at the University of Hartford and a National Geographic Explorer and Fulbright-Nehru Fellow, investigates plastic pollution through interdisciplinary methods that merge environmental science, policy and the arts. Her ongoing project, "Entangled and Ingested," features life-sized portraits of animals harmed by plastic waste, created from unrecyclable film plastic in public sewing workshops. Owens will explore early modern texts in our collection that feature wetlands and river ecosystems.

Lim, UMass class of '99, is a Queens-based printmaker and community-engaged artist. A first-generation U.S.-born Tagalog-Toisan artist, Lim integrates printmaking, film and dialogue to deepen connections between humans and the environment. Her recent work includes the short film "Remember Our Connection: Mending and Repair," and she is a 2025 Korea Art Forum Shared Dialogue, Shared Space Fellow. Lim will work with the Kinney Center's rare book collection looking for evidence of early modern thinking that connects transgenerational knowledge, place and ecological adaptability.

Public talks, workshops, publications and exhibitions for each residency will be announced throughout the year. More information on the artists in residence and their upcoming exhibits can be found at https://www.renaissanceoftheearth.com. More information about the Kinney Center can be found at umass.edu/renaissance.