Donna Bilak

Donna teaches jewelry studies to Fine Arts students at Pratt and RISD as well as history of early modern science and technology to Humanities students at NYU and (until 2024) to STEM students at Stevens Institute of Technology. Donna’s approach to material and visual culture combines the philosophy and practice of early modern alchemy with present-day materials science research to produce new knowledge, new research and teaching methods, and skillsets that can nimbly adapt to current social-environmental needs.

Donna’s current project “Common Ground” —  a biomimetic environmental art installation on Governors Island with Linda O’Keeffe (Stony Brook, Art) and Farzad Mahootian (NYU, Liberal Studies) — integrates her work in jewelry, alchemy, environmental studies, and history of science. It uses the development of an interactive environmental art installation to examine escalating present-day biodiversity loss in New York City. Project development is supported by Pratt’s School of Art Dean’s Emergent Research Fund and is at an initial stage, connecting archive, workbench, climate, and change at a local level in thinking through viable approaches for dealing with “invasive plants” that are pulling down swathes of New York’s wood- and parklands, with focus on Japanese knotweed and porcelain berry.

Donna is a 2025 CTL Faculty Fellow, her project “Re-making Making” aims to develop a materials research-based pedagogy for the Jewelry department. Structured as a series of experimental “artisanal humanities” workshops, the project brings together cross-departmental expertise to help identify and develop curricular pathways whereby artisanal praxis can be redirected to remediate pollution locally, even hyper-locally as within the studio itself, guided by imaginative collaboration and research partnerships. Donna’s experimental research agenda includes recreating imitation gemstones (vitrified metals and minerals) based on 17th-century alchemical recipes.

Donna co-directs the Future of Jewelry Research Accelerator (with Brice Garrett) at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and directs the materials research group Active Matter.

Donna’s publications include the Special Issue, Gold & Mercury: Amalgamated Histories in Chemistry, Culture, and Environment (Ambix 2023), and Furnace & Fugue: A Digital Edition of Michael Maier’s Atalanta fugiens (1618) with Scholarly Commentary  (University of Virginia Press, 2020), co-edited with Tara Nummedal and awarded the Roy Rosenzweig Prize by the American Historical Association.

PhD – Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture
Bard Graduate Center

MPhil – Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture
Bard Graduate Center

MA – History
York University

Ontario College Advanced Diploma – Jewelry Arts
George Brown College of Applied Arts and Technology

Guest Editor, “Gold & Mercury: Amalgamated Histories in Chemistry, Culture, and Environment.” Special Issue, AMBIX: The Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, 70.1 (February 2023).https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/yamb20/70/1

“Living Then and Now with Gold and Mercury.” In Gold & Mercury Special Issue, AMBIX, 70.1 (February 2023): 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2192590

(With George Vrtis) “Environmental Alchemy: Mercury-Gold Amalgamation Mining and the Transformation of the Earth.” In Gold & Mercury Special Issue, AMBIX, 70.1 (February 2023): 31–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2192131

“Ch.3 Laboratories and Technology: Chymical Practice and Sensory Experience.” In A Cultural History of Chemistry in the Early Modern Age, ed. Bruce T. Moran, 67–88. Volume 3 of A Cultural History of Chemistry, gen. eds. Peter Morris and Alan Rocke. London: Bloomsbury, 2022.

(With Tara Nummedal) Furnace and Fugue: A Digital Edition of Michael Maier’s Atalanta fugiens (1618) with Scholarly Commentary. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2020. https://doi.org/10.26300/bdp.ff

“Chasing Atalanta: Maier, Steganography, and the Secrets of Nature.” In Furnace and Fugue. https://doi.org/10.26300/bdp.ff.bilak

(With Tara Nummedal) “Interplay: New Scholarship on Atalanta fugiens.” In Furnace and Fugue. https://edition640.makingandknowing.org/#/essays/ann_305_ie_19

“Out of the Ivy and into the Arctic: Imitation Coral Reconstruction in Cross-Cultural Contexts.” Special Issue, “Rethinking Performative Methods in the History of Science.” Guest Editor, Marieke M. A. Hendriksen. Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 43.3 (September 2020): 341–366. https://doi.org/10.1002/bewi.202000010

“Making and Knowing Pedagogy.” In Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France. A Digital Critical Edition and English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640, eds. Pamela H. Smith et al. Columbia University Libraries, NY: The Making and Knowing Project, 2020. https://edition640.makingandknowing.org/#/essays/ann_305_ie_19