Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Arts & Culture
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Arts & Culture

ACCelerate: ACC Smithsonian Creativity and Innovation Festival to Showcase VPA Professor’s Work

Wednesday, October 11, 2017, By Erica Blust
Share
ACCCollege of Visual and Performing Artsfaculty

Syracuse University and the College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) have participated in a yearlong process with the Atlantic Coast Conference, partner ACC universities and the Smithsonian Institution to create the first “ACCelerate: ACC Smithsonian Creativity and Innovation Festival.” Presented by Virginia Tech and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, the ACCelerate Festival is a three-day celebration of creative exploration and research at the nexus of science, engineering, arts and design. Visitors to the festival will interact with leading innovators from ACC universities—including Sam Van Aken, associate professor of studio arts in VPA’s  School of Art—and engage with new interdisciplinary technologies that draw upon art, science and humanities to address global challenges.

fruit from Tree of 40 Fruit

Artist Sam Van Aken’s Tree of 40 Fruit grows dozens of kinds of fruit.

Held at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 13-15, from 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. each day, the event is programmed by Virginia Tech’s Institute for Creativity, Arts and Technology and the museum’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation.

The event is free and showcases the 15 universities of the ACC in an opportunity for the schools to display their work to each other and, more importantly, to the public. In addition to the 47 featured interactive installations, the festival will include panel discussions and performances throughout the three days.

The festival will be featured on all three public floors in the west wing of the National Museum of American History, located on Constitution Avenue between 12th and 14th streets, NW, along the National Mall in Washington, D.C. There will be 47 interactive installations from across the 15 ACC schools around six thematic areas:

    • civic engagement
    • arts and technology
    • sustainability and environment
    • biomimetics
    • health and body
    • making and advanced manufacturing

Van Aken is a contemporary artist who works beyond traditional modes of art-making, crossing artistic genres and disciplines to develop new perspectives on such themes as communication, botany, agriculture, climatology and the ever-increasing impact of technology. At the ACCelerate Festival he will exhibit a tree from his Tree of 40 Fruit series. The Tree of 40 Fruit is a single grafted tree with the capacity to grow more than 40 different varieties of stone fruit, including peach, plum, apricot, nectarine, cherry and almond. Created by Van Aken through the process of grafting, the Tree of 40 Fruit appears as a normal fruit tree throughout the majority of the year until spring, when it blossoms in variegated tones of pink, white and crimson, and summer, when it becomes laden with a multitude of fruit.

Primarily composed of antique and native stone fruit varieties the Tree of 40 Fruit is a form of conservation, preserving rare, unknown or now forgotten cultivars that are not commercially available. Learn more at www.treeof40fruit.com.

  • Author

Erica Blust

  • Recent
  • DPS Earns Accreditation From International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators
    Friday, June 6, 2025, By Kiana Racha
  • Rock Record Illuminates Oxygen History
    Thursday, June 5, 2025, By Dan Bernardi
  • What Can Ancient Climate Tell Us About Modern Droughts?
    Thursday, June 5, 2025, By News Staff
  • Blackstone LaunchPad Founders Circle Welcomes New Members
    Thursday, June 5, 2025, By Cristina Hatem
  • Syracuse Stage Concludes 2024-25 Season With ‘The National Pastime’
    Wednesday, June 4, 2025, By Joanna Penalva

More In Arts & Culture

Syracuse Stage Concludes 2024-25 Season With ‘The National Pastime’

Syracuse Stage concludes its 2024-25 season with the world premiere production of “The National Pastime,” a provocative psychological thriller about state secrets, sonic weaponry, stolen baseball signs and the father and son relationship in the middle of it all. Written…

Syracuse Stage Hosts Inaugural Julie Lutz New Play Festival

Syracuse Stage is pleased to announce that the inaugural Julie Lutz New Play Festival will be held at the theatre this June. Formerly known as the Cold Read Festival of New Plays, the festival will feature a work-in-progress reading and…

Light Work Opens New Exhibitions

Light Work has two new exhibitions, “The Archive as Liberation” and “2025 Light Work Grants in Photography, that will run through Aug. 29. “The Archive as Liberation” The exhibition is on display in the Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery at Light…

Spelman College Glee Club to Perform at Return to Community: A Sunday Gospel Jazz Service June 29

As the grand finale of the 2025 Syracuse International Jazz Fest, the Spelman College Glee Club of Atlanta will perform at Hendricks Chapel on Sunday, June 29. The Spelman College Glee Club, now in its historic 100th year, is the…

Alumnus, Visiting Scholar Mosab Abu Toha G’23 Wins Pulitzer Prize for New Yorker Essays

Mosab Abu Toha G’23, a graduate of the M.F.A. program in creative writing in the College of Arts and Sciences and a current visiting scholar at Syracuse University, has been awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for a series of essays…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

  • X
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
Social Media Directory

For the Media

Find an Expert Follow @SyracuseUNews
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • @SyracuseU
  • @SyracuseUNews
  • Social Media Directory
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Campus Status
  • Syracuse.edu
© 2025 Syracuse University News. All Rights Reserved.