About Founder & Director Rich Pell




Richard Pell is an Associate Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon. He is the founder and executive director of the Center for PostNatural History (CPNH), an organization dedicated to the collection and exposition of life-forms that have been intentionally and heritably altered through domestication, selective breeding, or genetic engineering. The Center for PostNatural History operates a permanent museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pell was a founder of the internationally acclaimed art and engineering group The Institute for Applied Autonomy. Pell’s works have appeared in science and art museums internationally including the Victoria and Albert Museum and Wellcome Collection in London, the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, the CCCB in Barcelona, the ZKM in Karlsruhe, the 2008 Taipei Biennial, and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. The CPNH has been featured in National Geographic, Nature Magazine, American Scientist, National Public Radio, and the Atlas Obscura. The CPNH has been awarded a Rockefeller New Media fellowship, a Creative Capital fellowship, a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, and received generous support from Waag Society and the Kindle Project. His book, This Is NOT An Artifact was published by K-Verlag Press in 2023. Pell is a National Academy of Science KAVLI Fellow and was awarded the 2016 Pittsburgh Artist of the Year.