AT THE ALLEN / FALL 2023 / 5 several years as an assistant in the art department at Beloit College inWisconsin, where her parents hadmoved, from 1899 to 1902. But in 1903, she was hired at the Observatory as a permanent staffmember, a “computer”—one of a group of women who visually processed astronomical data by studying glass plate negatives of the night sky. She spent the remainder of her years committed to a life of looking, part of a unique community of women at the Observatory who were dedicated to understanding the stars and our place in them. In 1908, the same year she first published her groundbreaking research on the period-luminosity relation, Leavitt filled out and returned to Oberlin a formwith information about her life to be used in the upcoming “Anniversary Catalogue of Former Students,” on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the College’s founding. She noted that her present occupation was “astronomical research,” and that she was a member of the Astronomical and Astrophysical Society of America (1904) and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1906), listing as well her many publications as part of the Harvard Observatory Circular, and her recent, important, 1777 Variables in the Magellanic Clouds, a seminal paper on which she was to expand in 1912. Leavitt’s meticulous observations and careful calculations of cycles of brightness inherent in variable stars provided the first tool to measure the distance to faraway stars. By all accounts hardworking and serious, she was warm and beloved by colleagues. She experienced a loss of hearing in her 20s that left her deaf in her later years, and died of cancer in Cambridge in 1921 at the age of 53. In 1925, unaware of her death, mathematician Gösta Mittag-Leffler of the Swedish Academy of Sciences wrote to her, recognizing the profundity of her discovery and indicating his intention to nominate her for the Nobel Prize—which, however, is not awarded posthumously. Leavitt’s quiet brilliance was appreciated by many who knew her, but recognition of her discoveries, more broadly, was elusive. To Anna Von Mertens, who first encountered Leavitt’s story when she was developing a research-based exhibition for Harvard Radcliffe Institute in 2018, her life and work were revelatory and inspiring—an origin story for the vast distances that had long structured and informed her own work. Patterns, mapping, methods of measurement, and other sources of data are embedded in Von Mertens’s practice. Through a rigorous process that involves digital technology, traditional hand-quiltingmethods, and exquisite draftsmanship, she creates works that investigate our shared history and environment, inspiring contemplation and reflection on our place in the universe. This exhibition centers on a diptych—cinematic in scale— that Von Mertens created depicting the stars on the days of Leavitt’s birth and death; the two panels are separated by an equally large space that holds the span of Leavitt’s life. In these textiles, Von Mertens used threads of varying brightness to characterize the different stars, simultaneously bringing to mind both the focus of Leavitt’s work and the continuing cycle of time of which we are all a part. Von Mertens’s work first entered the AMAM collection through a quilt from a similar perspective, which is also on view in the exhibition and depicts the movement of the stars during the time fromwhen shots were fired at Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968 until the pronouncement of his death. This is part of her series As the Stars Go By, showing the sky above moments of tragedy in American history. Each of these works inspires awe and respectful contemplation—both at the care embodied in the artist’s practice and for the lives her stitches hold. The textiles that CONTINUED Left: View III (detail), 2016. Hand-stitched cotton. Private Collection, New York, New York. Photo by Jade Nguyen. Below: Artifacts (Plate AX3309, Sept. 13-14, 1934, Seeing fair first 1 ½ hrs.) (detail), 2019. Pencil on paper. Private Collection, New York, New York. Photo by Jennifer L. Roberts. Right: View III, 2016. Private Collection, New York, New York. View II, 2015. View IV, 2015. View VI, 2017, View V, 2016. View I, 2015. Hand-stitched cotton. Unless noted: Courtesy of the artist and Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, Oregon. Photo by John Seyfried.
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