After a studying at Hungarian Film School in Budapest and at New York University, Natasha de Betak (b. France) began making short and experimental films. Since then, she has participated in many group exhibitions including creating a video installation in Paris with the French artist, VIKTOR. Her own film KAAL was exhibited at Hermes Gallery in Tokyo and won “Best Short Fiction Film Award” at the Tempere International Film Festival. Many other International awards followed including “The Best Cinematography.” The Sundance Institute chose KAAL as one of the “Ten Best Short Films of the Year.” Her recent film SPEAKING TREE, which came out of a six-year-long encounter with a man tied to a tree in the middle of the desert of Kutch and tended to by his mother because of his mental illness, was nominated for “The Best Documentary” at MIAAC in New York and had its European Premiere at the Paris Film Festival in 2008. Later in July of that year the Boston Museum of Fine Arts invited De Betak to include two of her films in the Art of Being exhibition.

Her extensive travels in India, Indonesia, Russia, Mexico and Jamaica have helped her to develop a new body of photographic work. Her first series of photographs appeared as a collector’s edition book titled NIGHTSHADE. In it she explores the interior states of mind that crowd into and around sleep. Ms. de Betak is currently working on a series of photographs on the theme of the “unborn” and the “aura”. She is based in Paris and speaks English, French, Spanish and Italian.

Natasha de Betak was the first new Artist-in-Residence to live and work in a newly built apartment at the museum. Right from the start, de Betak delved into the collection and began taking photographs. Her interest in this activity grew after going on a flashlight tour of the galleries at night. On several evenings de Betak returned to photograph the collection in the dark with a special attention paid to hands and eyes in the collection. During the day, de Betak examined and photographed a selection of lockets and boxes from archival cases in the galleries that contain the hair of John Keats, Franz Listz, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the hair and a rose from Robert Browning’s funeral bier. She also photographed a folio book of Edgar Alan Poe’s The Raven; Chiromancy: The Science of Palmistry, which was given to Gardner by its author Henry Frith.

In the archives, de Betak looked at Isabella Stewart Gardner’s Indian travel album and read diaries from that trip. She read poems and comments written in Gardner’s “autograph book” from her days at St. Mary’s School (1865) and a Finishing School in France. She also viewed a volume of photographs Gardner collected of celebrities and royals. Other interests surfaced after a visit to the Gardner’s crypt at Mt. Auburn Cemetery. On return, she studied Isabella’s directions for her funeral and her will. On April 14, de Betak attended Isabella Stewart Gardner’s memorial service held annually in the Long Gallery chapel.

In addition to her time at the Museum, Natasha de Betak spent several days photographing books in the collection of the Warren Anatomical Museum, Countway Library of Medicine, at Harvard Medical School. She accessed volumes on the brain, nervous system, mental disorders, as well as watercolors from the late 1800’s illustrating examples of breast cancer and venereal disease. In total de Betak amassed a collection of over 4,000 photographs which she used to assemble several new works in the apartment’s studio. Following her residency, de Betak stayed a week in New York City and made a trip to Baltimore, MD to photograph Edgar Allen Poe’s grave.