• Preparation for the opera performance at MIT of my libretto, Cassandra in the Temples, composed by the Guggenheim-winning composer Elena Ruehr for the Grammy-winning vocal ensemble, Roomful of Teeth. I will be sharing my experience from the institute with classes through my Visiting Artist residency. The Institute and immersion in Greece also provided ideas for future staging.

• The experience helped to shape a commissioned exhibition essay on the artwork of Sanda Iliescu (Associate Professor of Architecture & Art at the University of Virginia), also forthcoming as a chapbook from Gallery Molly Krom in New York City. Additionally, Sanda and I are undertaking a larger writing and art collaboration called “Correspondences.”

• Although the Institute didn’t change my draft of Ugliness: A Cultural History for Reaktion Books, the experience certainly animated the material and issues!

• The Institute’s immersion in museums will be useful to share for my spring course at Georgetown University on “Writing and the Museum.”

Gretchen E. Henderson is a writer who works at the intersection of literature, creative writing, book history, art history, museum studies, disability studies, and music. She is an Affiliated Scholar at Kenyon College.