Lauren Robertson and Kate Daudy
In the Garden, Childe Hassam. Public domain image.
In this Library Chat, Assistant Professor, author, and Fellow Lauren Robertson, along with artist and Abigail R. Cohen Fellow Kate Daudy, explore how bees have symbolized social order, creativity, and spiritual connection throughout history. From early modern metaphors of monarchy to contemporary views of bees as collaborators and kin, they trace the bee’s role in literature, ritual, and community. Their conversation reflects on how these ideas inform both artistic practice and personal engagement with the world—ultimately likening the Institute itself to a harmonious beehive.
Kate Daudy is a conceptual artist best known for her public interventions and large-scale outdoor sculptures. Her imagination extends across the multiplicity of art forms, she speaks several languages and often involves words in her work. The wealth of her ideas is visible through the innate dynamics of her career – vision and personal engagement, innovative use of new technologies, environmentalism and the bringing of light. She has long standing collaborations with scientists and thinkers across many media. Although disruptive, her work remains full of optimism. Current world circumstances may seem dire but, Daudy underlines, the future is in our hands.
Lauren Robertson is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where she works on early modern literature and culture. She is the author of Entertaining Uncertainty in the Early Modern Theater: Stage Spectacle and Audience Response (Cambridge 2023), and her articles appear in Shakespeare Studies, Renaissance Drama, Shakespeare Quarterly, English Literary Renaissance, and Theatre Journal.
