How a Remedial Math Tool Ended Up at the Whitney

His string creations recently found a wider audience when the Whitney Museum asked him to lead a family workshop, part of the programming connected to “Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith,” an exhibition of the work of the Beat polymath, which includes some of Smith’s own string figures. Murphy, who is eighty-five, arrived at the museum dressed in mismatched socks that coördinated with strings wrapped around his wrists. He knew Smith in the old days; the workshop would teach people how to make some basic string forms. “This is not my art that I’m showing here. That’s my art,” he said pointing to the iPad. But, as an educator, he said, “this is the culmination of what I’ve been trying to do.”