About the Author

Mark Dion is an American artist whose works have appeared in such museums as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate in London, and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, and been featured in the PBS series Art 21. Dion has been an artist-in-residence at the Museum of Natural History in London. His work examines the ways in which dominant ideologies and public institutions shape our understanding of history, knowledge, and the natural world. Appropriating various scientific methods of collecting, ordering, and exhibiting objects, Dion creates works that question the distinctions between ‘objective’ (‘rational’) scientific methods and ‘subjective’ (‘irrational’) influences.