David Beck is a contemporary American artist known for his ingenious combination of woodworking, painting, and miniaturist sculpture techniques, as seen in his work MVSEVM (2006). His inventive sculptures reference curiosity cabinets, Joseph Cornell’s boxes, 19th-century mechanical toys, and natural history dioramas. “I like the notion of public and private spaces, and of the intimacy that evolves when a viewer is forced to look at an object one on one,” he explained. Born in 1953 in Muncie, IN, he received his BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1976. That same year, he moved to New York where he began exhibiting his work regularly at Allan Stone Gallery. Also a musician, Beck often records sound effects to go along with his mechanized sculptures. He currently lives and works between San Francisco, CA, and New York, NY. Today, the artist’s works are held in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Bergman Collection in Chicago, IL.