Serena Scapagnini unveils permanent neuroscience-inspired artwork at Yale

On June 4, Yale University's Wu Tsai Institute inaugurates "Saliency, La Memoria Cangiante," a permanent installation by Italian artist and scholar Serena Scapagnini. The work is the result of a year-long interdisciplinary residency during which Scapagnini collaborated with neuroscientists, cognitive scholars, and researchers. The large-scale painting interprets memory as a dynamic, transformative process, drawing on visual references from neuroscience—including a blue undulating structure evoking the hippocampus. The project follows Scapagnini's earlier collaboration with the Yale Quantum Institute in 2025, which produced installations on quantum physics. The inauguration includes a public conversation with Wu Tsai Institute Director Nick Turk-Browne and neuroscientist Mike Higley, with whom Scapagnini has worked for over a decade. The artwork's permanent placement at Yale highlights the growing international recognition of contemporary Italian art within scientific and academic contexts, amid ongoing debate about the visibility of Italian artists in major global exhibitions like the Venice Biennale.