A Mathematics Trail Surrounds the Rubin Museum of Art
Mathematics professor Ron Lancaster of Math for America launches an interactive Chelsea neighborhood tour on Monday, August 24

(New York) August 5, 2009 - Math and art complement each other at the Rubin Museum of Art (RMA) where visitors may follow a Math Trail, an interactive self-guided tour of the neighborhood surrounding the museum that incorporates mathematical problems and puzzles. Designed by the nonprofit organization Math for America to increase interest in math among high school students, math trails provide opportunities to apply classroom lessons to real life settings. The guide to the trail surrounding the Rubin Museum of Art was created by Ron Lancaster, Senior Lecturer, Mathematics Education, University of Toronto, and can be downloaded from the museum’s website: www.rmanyc.org/mathtrail and Math for America’s site: http://www.mathforamerica.org/mathtrails.

Professor Lancaster will lead the tour starting at the Rubin Museum of Art, 150 West 17th Street near 7th Avenue, on Monday, August 24. Participants will gather at 1:30 and the tour will begin at 2:00 p.m. There is no fee to participate and no admission charge to enter the ground floor of the museum.

RMA is particularly appropriate for a math trail due to the proliferation of mandala images throughout the structure of the museum and within the museum’s collection, including the RMA logo, designed by Milton Glaser, incorporating a circle within a square. Devotional objects often associated with Buddhism, mandalas can be concentric circles, circles within squares, squares within circles, lotus blossoms, six-pronged stars, or inverted, crossed triangles. The launch of the Math Trail coincides with the museum’s newest exhibition: Mandala: The Perfect Circle. The first of three in The Cosmologies Series, the museum’s ten-month-long investigation of how different cultures have visually represented the universe, from the solar system to the self, Mandala: The Perfect Circle explores the history and meaning of the mandala, Himalayan Buddhism’s artistic representation of man and the universe.

Math for America (www.mathforamerica.org) has programs based in New York, Los Angeles, San Diego and Washington, D.C. MfA seeks to improve math education in secondary public schools by recruiting, training and retaining outstanding mathematics teachers. MfA provides Fellowships that allow teachers to receive a full tuition scholarship to earn a Master’s Degree, a stipend in addition to their teacher’s salary and continuous professional development, mentoring and leadership opportunities. In New York City alone, Math for America has placed teachers in 130 secondary public schools, impacting more than 21,000 students.

Rubin Museum of Art
The Rubin Museum of Art holds one of the world’s most important collections of Himalayan art. Paintings, pictorial textiles, and sculpture are drawn from cultures that touch upon the arc of mountains that extends from Afghanistan in the northwest to Myanmar (Burma) in the southeast and includes Tibet, Nepal, Mongolia, and Bhutan. The larger Himalayan cultural sphere, determined by significant cultural exchange over millennia, includes Iran, India, China, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia. This rich cultural legacy, largely unfamiliar to Western viewers, offers an uncommon opportunity for visual adventure and aesthetic discovery.

Admission to RMA is $10 for adults; $7 for seniors, students and artists (with ID); $2 for college students (with ID); $7 for neighbors (zip codes 10011 & 10001 with ID); free for seniors the first Monday of every month; and free for children under 12 and for museum members. Gallery admission is free to all on Fridays between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m.

Open Monday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Wednesday 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Thursday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Friday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed on Tuesday. To reach the museum by subway, visitors may take the A, C or E to 14th Street; the 1 to 18th Street; 1, 2, 3 to 14th Street; F and V to 14th Street; N, R, Q, W, 4, 5 and 6 to 14th or the L to 6th Avenue. By bus, visitors may take the B20 to the corner of 7th Avenue and 17th Street.