AT THE ALLEN / FALL 2023 / 7 Fromdistant galaxies to the depths of the ocean, artistic rendering is an essential tool for imagining and ultimately knowing uncharted realms. Combining precision and intuition, observation and imagination, the works in this exhibition make intelligible that which is too dark or distant to be seen. This presentation expands on the adjacent exhibition of work by Anna Von Mertens, who writes, “We are stardust. Everything is.” Most of the atoms in our body were formed inside stars, supernovae, and neutron star collisions. Precious metals, too, are cinders of neutron stardust, forged in billion-degree supernovae. Thinking creatively about aerial perspective, geological time, and vision technologies, these works situate Earth within the cosmos, andmake fathomable our infinitesimal existence within it. The exhibition includes works by Berenice Abbott, Lynda Benglis, Vija Celmins, Michelle Grabner, Nancy Graves, Karen Gunderson, Wendy Red Star, and Hiroshi Sugimoto, among others. Organized by SamAdams, Ellen Johnson ’33 Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. ON VIEW / ELLEN JOHNSON GALLERY / AUG 1–DEC 23 EVERYTHING IS STARDUST: ARTMAKING AND THE KNOWABILITY OF THE UNIVERSE Opposite left: Henrietta Leavitt, HUGFP 125.82 Box 2. Harvard University Archives. Oppostite right: Anna Von Mertens. Photo by Caitlin Selby. Opposite bottom: The Stars Fading fromView on the Morning of Henrietta Leavitt’s Birth, July 4, 1868, Lancaster, Massachusetts, 2018. The Stars Returning into View on the Evening of Henrietta Leavitt’s Death, December 12, 1921, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2018. Hand-stitched cotton. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by John Seyfried. Above: Eva Hesse Archive, Postcard fromNancy Holt and Robert Smithson, New York, NY, postmarked July 20, 1967. Postcard with writing in pen. Gift of Helen Hesse Charash, 1977.52.69.44. Right: Vija Celmins (American, b. 1938), Constellation-Uccello, 1982. Aquatint with etching. Oberlin Friends of Art Fund, 1984.27.
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