​Presented by New Museum's NEW INC and Water Street Projects and hosted by WSA

​7pm-8pm: Cocktail Reception

​8pm-9pm: Podcast Live Taping

​9pm-9:30pm: Closing Reception

​Join us for an unforgettable live taping of Sing For Science with Academy Award-winning filmmaker, NYTimes bestselling author, and GRAMMY award-winning musician Questlove and pioneering developmental psychologist Dr. Susan Engel, celebrating the release of Questlove's new children's book, The Idea In You. Dr. Engel, renowned for her groundbreaking research on curiosity in children, will share insights from her lab's current studies on how kids come up with ideas. Together, they’ll explore the intersection of creativity, storytelling, and the science of imagination, highlighting the crucial role fostering creativity in children's cognitive development. Presented by the New Museum and Water Street Projects and moderated by Sing For Science host, Matt Whyte, this event promises an inspiring conversation that blends music, science, and the magic of childhood discovery. 

​Sing for Science is an award winning, Top 10 Music Interview Podcast on Apple's charts where musicians talk about science with scientists, scholars, and science journalists. Past episodes include Korn leader Jonathan Davis and science writer Mary Roach on mortuary science, SIA and sex therapist Alex Katehakis on attachment theory, Weezer's Rivers Cuomo and Python creator Guido Van Rossum on coding, and dozens more that engage science-curious fans of music like no other podcast. Created and hosted by New York musician, Matt Whyte, the podcast’s goal is to increase science literacy for as many people as possible by reaching a variety of different musicians’ fan bases. Listeners come to the show through their love of music and leave with a new piece of knowledge. For more information please visit singforscience.org

​In 2023, New Museum and NEW INC invited Sing for Science to record a live episode as part of our annual art, design, and technology festival DEMO. Then, we invited musician Eartheater and computational biologist Dr. Elizabeth Hénaff to discuss the process of mitosis and cell division. We look forward to this next iteration of our collaboration.

​ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

​Questlove

​Academy Award-winning filmmaker, drummer, DJ, producer, director, culinary entrepreneur, New York Times best-selling author, and member of The Roots – Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, is the unmistakable heartbeat of Philadelphia’s most influential hip-hop group. He is the Musical Director for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where his beloved Roots crew serves as house band. Beyond that, this 6-time GRAMMY Award-winning musician's indisputable reputation has landed him musical directing positions for everyone from D'Angelo to Jay-Z. Questlove made his directorial debut with the Academy Award-winning feature documentary Summer of Soul. The movie broke the record for the highest-selling documentary to come out of Sundance, and it has since gone on to win “Best Feature Documentary” at the 2022 Academy Awards, “Best Documentary” at the 2022 British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) and “Best Music Film” at the 2022 Grammy Awards, as well as a Peabody  Award. In addition, Summer of Soul was crowned the “Best Movie of 2021” by The New York Times and included among the “best of the year” by The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, TIME Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone and more. Outside of Summer of Soul, Questlove partnered together with Black Thought of The Roots to launch a production company, Two One Five Entertainment. Together, the pair announced a first-look deal with Universal Television to develop scripted and non-scripted programming. In 2022, the company executive produced the acclaimed feature documentary Descendant about the historic discovery of The Clotilda—the last known slave ship to arrive in America illegally transporting enslaved Africans. The documentary, which made its world premiere at Sundance in 2022, was acquired by Netflix and Higher Ground—President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s production company. The film earned an impressive three nominations for “Best Documentary Feature,” “Best Director,” and “Best Historical Documentary” and took home the award for “Best Historical Documentary” at the 2022 Critics Choice Documentary Awards. It also received a nomination for “Outstanding Documentary” for the 2023 NAACP Image Awards and was also named one of the “Top 5 Documentaries” of 2022 by the National Board of Review. Questlove’s web series, Quest for Craft, produced by Two One Five and launched in partnership with the single malt whiskey brand, The Balvenie, took home a Webby Award in 2023. Up next, Questlove will make his feature film directing debut with a live-action hybrid reimagining of The Aristocats for Walt Disney Studios. Two One Five is set to produce the film alongside Olive Bridge. Questlove has written multiple books, including the New York Times bestsellers Hip-Hop Is History, Mo’ Meta Blues, Creative Quest, Music is History, and The Rhythm of Time, as well as the GRAMMY-nominated audio books Music Is History and Creative Quest. Expanding his literary endeavors, in 2023 he launched his own book imprint, AUWA Books, within MCD Books, a publishing division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The imprint will publish both nonfiction and fiction on a wide range of topics.

​Dr. Susan Engel

​Susan Engel is the Class of 1959 Director of the Program in Teaching, and Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Williams College. Her research interests include the development of narrative, curiosity, and invention in childhood. Her current research examines how children pursue ideas. Her scholarly work has appeared in journals such as Cognitive Development, Developmental Psychology, Haravard Education Review, and the American Education Research Journal. Her writing on education has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg View, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, Salon, Huffington Post, and The Boston Globe. Her books include: The End of the Rainbow: How educating for happiness (not money) would transform schools, The Hungry Mind: The origins of curiosity in childhood, and The Intellectual Lives of Children. She is currently writing a book on kindergarten in America.

​ABOUT The Idea in You

​A joyous exploration of imagination and finding inspiration, The Idea in You is the debut picture book from Questlove—New York Times bestselling author, six-time GRAMMY Award–winning drummer, producer, and Academy Award–winning filmmaker—and Coretta Scott King Honor Award–winning illustrator Sean Qualls.

​ABOUT NEW INC

​As the first museum-led cultural incubator, NEW INC was conceived of as a not-for-profit platform for furthering the New Museum’s ongoing commitment to new art and new ideas. Now in Year 10, NEW INC’s membership model continues to support a diverse range of creative practitioners with a values-driven program and safe space for gathering and developing new creative projects and businesses. In 2020, NEW INC launched ONX Studio, an XR accelerator for artists, in partnership with the Onassis Foundation. NEW INC was cofounded by the New Museum’s Toby Devan Lewis Director Lisa Phillips and former Deputy Director Karen Wong in 2014.

​ABOUT NEW MUSEUM

​The New Museum is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to contemporary art. Founded in 1977, the New Museum is a center for exhibitions, information, and documentation about living artists from around the world. From its beginnings as a one-room office on Hudson Street to the inauguration of its first freestanding building on the Bowery designed by SANAA in 2007, the New Museum continues to be a place of experimentation and a hub of new art and new ideas.

​ABOUT WATER STREET PROJECTS

​Water Street Projects is a roving interdisciplinary nonprofit platform amplifying creative voices. Our projects include performance art, fairs, festivals, music shows, culinary experiences, and visual arts which champion diversity and global points of view. Our fluid and expansive attitude for entertainment and education invokes the spirit of Cedric Price’s never-realized Fun Palace commissioned by Joan Littlewood—a forum for a laboratory of fun and a university of the streets.

​ABOUT WSA

​WSA (Water Street Associates) reimagines an iconic postmodern downtown tower for the creative community of thirty-one floors and provides exhibition spaces, work suites & offices, production studios for podcasting, music, video & XR, lounges & salons, an expansive spa & gym, multiple dining concepts, and atelier retail. Clustering spirited artists and creative entrepreneurs in fashion, art, culture and technology is the alchemy for public programming and activities taking place year round at WSA.  

​ABOUT SING FOR SCIENCE

​Sing for Science is an award-winning Top 10 Music Interview Podcast on Apple's charts where musicians talk about science with scientists, scholars, and science journalists. Past episodes include Korn leader Jonathan Davis and science writer Mary Roach on mortuary science, SIA, and sex therapist Alex Katehakis on attachment theory, Weezer's Rivers Cuomo and Python creator Guido Van Rossum on coding, and dozens more that engage science-curious fans of music like no other podcast.

​The show is hosted by New York musician Matt Whyte, whose credits include composing for Netflix's Tiger King, Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, and fronting the mid-aughts band Earl Greyhound. Matt cites his participation in a Pete Seeger memorial concert at New York City's Joe's Pub as the podcast's inspiration; there, he became acutely aware of the breadth of issues to which Pete applied the power of song in his pursuit of change.

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