Betsy Medvedovsky

Exodus 2021 is a self-guided audio tour of the Jewish exodus from Egypt set in Highland Park, Los Angeles.

The audio tour combines a narrative about the Jewish exodus, interwoven with commissioned sound art and an oral history collage. Superimposing the events of the exodus onto the Highland Park neighborhood, Exodus 2021 invites guests to see themselves in the experience.

The tour is available online available for tour participants to stream content as they take the walk on their own schedule.

Co created with Katya Apekina

With audio art by
Alexx Schilling
Christina Aumann
Corey Fogel
Eleanor Tullock
Fil Corbitt
Linnea Sablosky & Adam Hirsch
Matthew Shifrin

Support by Asylum Arts.

Pop-Up Museum Pasadena was an interactive art installation that was set up five times in Pasadena in the Spring and Summer of 2016. Each Pop-Up had a specific theme (Conflict, Origins, Change, Gratitude, Family). Community members were invited to bring an object or a story to share on the theme, share their ideas on it, hang out, chat, and see what others think, creating a temporary community museum.

The pop-up was a collaboration between me and Steve Campos, and received a grant from the #MyPasadena project designed to explore Pasadena public life through art. The #MyPasadena projects were a series of events and artworks organized by the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs along with partner Side Street Projects, funded by a National Endowment for the Arts Our Town public art project award.

The Pop-Up structure was designed to be set up and broken day for each event. A modular shelving system allowed objects to be displayed, while prompts written on the panels invited passer-by to share their thoughts by drawing, writing, or making something.

Jaunt, a proposed social urban exploration game, was the 2016 Grand Prize winner for the Ford Smart Mobility Game Challenge.

Jaunt is an app that rewards players for exploring their city in new ways. The app sets landmarks throughout the city, organized along six interests: food, nature, art & culture, history, esoteric and shopping. Every time you go to a new landmark on a jaunt, you’ll get points, as well try a new way of moving through the city.

Jaunt is fun for both the intrepid urban explorer and the newbie who’s looking for a reason to leave their neighborhood on the weekend. Browse around and join a jaunt that fits with your interests or create a jaunt that will hit that restaurant, museum or secret garden you’ve been meaning to visit.

Every landmark comes with a short explanation, so you can forget the guide books at home, and create a jaunt on the go. Immediately see the destinations you haven’t been to before—which you’ll get extra points for. Find a buddy who’ll show you the ropes—or, just get lost together. Either way, you’ll see a totally different side of your city.

With Ilya Zarembsky.

Process Screenshots

While at Inaba, I was the Project Designer for 160-page publication commissioned by FREE Architects. Bringing together interviews, art and original contributions, Adaptation looked at the spread of technology in the city.

In Collaboration with FREE

Project Team
INABA: Jeffrey Inaba, Betsy Medvedovsky, Jordan Carver, Benedict Clouette, Christina Latina, Mimi Rojanasakul

Copy Editing
Superscript, New York, USA

Art direction for the Petersen Museum e-blast and e-blast design for the Petersen store. Fully redesigned, the e-blast is clean, responsive and fit in with the larger Petersen identity. A/B testing showed that museum members preferred more graphics and less text. Open and click-through rates immediately went up after the new e-blast format was introduced.

Street banners to promote Oxy Arts, a new initiative of Occidental College bringing together the college’s arts departments, done while working temporarily at Occidental. This was a really quick process and I needed to create a look for Oxy Arts that would be fit within the larger Occidental branding while being distinctive.

While at the Petersen, I launched a museum calendar, to be mailed out every month to members informing them of upcoming events. A maximally flexible template accommodated months with both very packed and loose schedules.

While an intern for C-LAB (the Columbia Laboratory for Architecture Broadcasting), I designed Forms of Content, a publication which summarized C-LAB’s huge archive of work. Forms of Content was a newsletter and an exhibition in one: it was designed to be both taken away and read and displayed in the Yoshioka Magazine Library in Tokyo.

Two sets of posters for the Days of Awesome, the Silverlake Independent Jewish Community Center’s take on the High Holy Days.

It was a lot of fun to work on the Petersen Museum’s Education Department materials. From the beginning, I decided to create a Petersen subbrand for the Education Department materials which would be appropriate to their specific visitors. All the Education Department materials use bright colors, and use American Typewriter (as opposed to the regular museum typeface, Interstate) to stay cohesive.

Wall graphics and signage for Mustang Forever: 50 Years of a Legend and identity for The World’s Greatest Sports Coupes

An interactive art installation for SIJCC’s Passover Community Seder this year, I was asked by the Silverlake Independent Jewish Community Center ( SIJCC) to create an interactive art installation on the topic of freedom.

I wanted to do a small and sweet ritual which would honor the voluntary bonds that we take on for ourselves every day of our lives, whether it is artistic, emotional, religious, social, etc. So I bought a ton of ribbons and invited guests to write down the rules that they lived by on the ribbon and we could tie them up in the SIJCC courtyard. The bright mural of the courtyard of course provided a fantastic backdrop.