Carol Steen is a renowned artist, writer, curator, and synesthete. In June 2017, she became the recipient of the inaugural Touro Presidential Award for Excellence in Research, a testament to her exceptional contributions to the field of art and research. The following year, she was promoted to Full Professor.
Steen earned her Master of Fine Arts degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art, and her work can be found in several prestigious public collections, including the Library of Congress, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the McLaughlin Gallery in Canada. With over 25 solo exhibitions and numerous group shows, her work has been widely recognized and appreciated. Steen has received numerous fellowships and awards, including from the MacDowell Colony, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and others.
Steen has appeared in numerous international television and radio documentaries, including 60 Minutes, BBC, and NPR, and was recently featured on William Shatner's The UnXplained. Her work has been featured in over 40 books and articles, including the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and the New York Times. She is a sought-after speaker and has presented her work at universities and museums worldwide, including the Centro Nacional de las Artes in Mexico City, the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, and the Royal Institution in London for the University of Sussex. In 2014, she was the keynote speaker for the South Carolina Federation of Museums, and in October 2017, she presented her recent work at the American Synesthesia Association's 12th National Conference at Harvard. In October 2019, she presented her research on Hypnagogia and Synesthesia at the Moscow State University of Pedagogy and Psychology, and exhibited her work at the Moscow State Museum, Russia. In 2024 she put on a synesthesia conference at Somerville College, University of Oxford, UK.
Steen is also the co-founder of the American Synesthesia Association, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting awareness and understanding of synesthesia. Her chapter on “Synesthesia and the Artistic Process” was published in the Oxford Handbook of Synesthesia, Oxford University Press, UK, 2013. In 2014, Peter Brook and Marie-Helene Estienne created a character in their play “The Valley of Astonishment” based in part on Steen's life.
Steen's hypnagogically inspired works, ‘works of light’, were created in Photoshop and exhibited at the Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn in 2014. In December 2016, an additional forty-seven of her images were filmed and shown at the Bouffes du Nord Theatre in Paris. Her solo exhibition at the University of Michigan Medical Center was well-received, with two pieces being acquired by the university. Her current work, Wanderings, was recently written about in the art journal Persimmon Tree in 2022.
Steen has been a part of the undergraduate faculty at Touro since 1983.
Education
- MFA, Cranbrook Academy of Art
