Looking At The Cosmos Through A Feminine Lens

Radcliffe Institute at Harvard presents an exhibition by Anna Von Mertens that stitchs together oast and present, science and art

- Anna Von Mertens

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University has opened an exhibition of new works by the celebrated artist Anna Von Mertens.

Von Mertens uses quilting and drawing to examine the frontiers of human understanding. In this exhibition, commissioned for the Radcliffe Institute, Von Mertens explores the role of repetition, recognition, notation, and imagination in the development of astronomy. In particular, she investigates the life and work of Henrietta Leavitt, one of the women “computers” hired a century ago to study glass-plate astronomical photographs at the Harvard College Observatory. “Anna Von Mertens is a conceptual artist who is best known for her hand-stitched black quilts that trace the paths of stars silently pivoting over epic or disastrous events in human history,” says Jennifer L. Roberts, Johnson-Kulukundis Family Faculty Director of the Arts, Radcliffe Institute, and Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Professor of the Humanities at Harvard.