Haas Arts Library is a featured destination, June 24, during city’s International Festival of Arts & Ideas

Haas Family Arts Library will be a stop along the walking tour “The Path of Memory, the Space Within: From Synapses to Quantum Physics” during this year’s citywide International Festival of Arts & Ideas.

Haas Library will showcase “Refractions,” an art-and-quantum-science installation by visual artist Serena Scapagnini, artist-in-residence at the Yale Quantum Institute. Scapagnini and Florian Carle, managing director of the institute, who are co-leading the tour, will discuss this work and others on Tuesday, June 24, from 2 to 3 p.m. The tour will also visit Scapagnini’s installations in two additional locations: the New Haven Green and the Yale Quantum Institute.

The three artworks on the tour are within a series titled Superposition, which was inspired by “cat states.” Cat states take their name from the thought experiment known as Schrödinger’s cat, which describes a paradoxical principle of quantum mechanics.

“Everything has a physical storage, even memory,” Scapagnini said. “‘Refractions’ is a work on the edge between different densities—from the more physical to the more rarefied ones—to evoke remembering visions on the edge of their natural dissolution.”

“Refractions”—made in collaboration with Harshvardhan Babla, a Ph.D. student in Applied Physics, and produced by Carle—will be on view at Haas Library from June 16 through fall 2025.

Also on view at Haas Library during the June festival, through Nov. 2,  is the exhibition “Plants on Paper: Artists’ Engagement with the Green World.”

The installation

Scapagnini’s site-specific work will be suspended in the lecture hall of Haas Library. “Refractions” is made of 6 handmade paper panels, created in Fabriano, Italy. Each panel contains a thin copper plate engraved with a quantum state. The quantum states are not visible to the visitor: the information is hidden within the paper, mirroring the way in which quantum information is hidden from researchers in a quantum device —requiring many operations to access it.

“With the architectonic configuration of the panels and the deeply human and tactile use of paper,” Carle said, “we could have not dreamed of a more perfect location than the art library within the architectural school. We wanted this piece to serve as an invitation to explore the fascinating library collection on paper making and paper as an art medium.”

The artist

For the past decade, Scapagnini has focused her artistic research on the structure and connections of neurons, working closely with Michael Higley from the Yale School of Medicine. In addition to this most recent series, during her year-long residency at the Quantum Institute, Scapagnini created a series of artworks titled “Synapses,” dedicated to “exploring the mind.” She collaborated with quantum researchers on themes of quantum memory, decoherence, and qubit lifetime—all processes linked to the lexicon of the human brain.

Scapagnini holds a master’s degree in Medieval Art History, Iconography, and Iconology from the University of Siena in Italy and a master’s degree in Painting and Mixed Media from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her work has received the Tjolöholm Art Prize in Goteborg, Sweden; First Prize at the Biennale of Contemporary Art in Genova, Italy; and the Mario Moderni Art Award, in Rome, Italy. She is a junior fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Science.  

Read more about Serena Scapagnini and her residency at Yale Quantum Institute. Read more in Yale News.

“Serena Scapagnini—The Space Beyond,” a documentary about the artist, will premiere on Saturday, June 21, at 1 p.m. in Room L02 of the Humanities Quadrangle, 320 York Street. Scapagnini, Babla, Higley, and Carle will be in conversation after the screening.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of New Haven’s International Festival of Arts and Ideas. View the calendar of the more than 150 festival events scheduled through June 28.

—Deborah Cannarella

Photo of Haas Arts Library interior by Mara Lavitt