PREMIERE EXHIBITION:
   The Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles SEPT 14, 2004 - MAY 29 2005
    www.skirball.org

The essence of Einstein’s profundity lay in his simplicity. - Banesh Hoffman

There was nothing simple about Einstein, ever. His simplicity concealed an impenetrable complexity. - Fritz Stern

Today’s person of sixty-seven is by no means the same as was the one of fifty, of thirty, or of twenty. Every reminiscence is colored by one’s present state, hence by a deceptive point of view. - Albert Einstein

  
Three Winters in the Sun: Einstein in California, is an interactive installation that presents a multi perspective portrait of Albert Einstein that emphasizes the many contradictions he evoked. It looks at him through six lenses, each focusing on his relations with a different community with which he interacted while a visiting research associate at Caltech: Émigrés, FBI, Hollywood, Household, Jews, Science.

Each lens enables us to explore a stream of narrative particles--brief episodes that highlight a different dimension of Einstein’s life. Some particles have links to other lenses, showing the close connections among these six interrelated communities.

Although this portrait focuses on the winters of those three years that Einstein spent at Caltech (1931, 1932 and 1933) , it shows this period was a turning point not only for Einstein and the six communities but also for the broader historical background that exerted such force over their lives.


Writer/producer - Marsha Kinder
Director - Kristy H.A. Kang
Interface designer - Andreas Kratky
Sound design - Juri Hwang
Production Managers - Priscilla Ovalle and Juri Hwang
Video production - Jay Majer
Animation - Katalin Nivelt and Gregory Araya
Research director - Clark Arnwine
Rights Clearances – JoAnn Hanley
Museum Intern – Andrew Wulf

Funded by The University of Southern California
Special Thanks to Provost Lloyd Armstrong Jr.

This project was developed in cooperation with the Skirball Cultural Center and with the Einstein Papers Project and Institute Archives at the California Institute of Technology.

Three Winters in the Sun: Einstein in California will also be published as a DVD-ROM forthcoming in January, 2005.