EXHIBITION: Your Body Is a Space That Sees

Schneider Museum of Art

ON VIEW: June 18 - September 14, 2019

Your Body is a Space That Sees is a series of large-scale cyanotype works (approximately 6ft x 6ft) that source the fragmented history and contributions of women in astronomy to represent a female-centric astronomical catalog of craters, comets, galaxies and nebula drawing from narrative, imagery and historical accounts of a group of women known as ‘Pickering’s Harem’ or the ‘Harvard Computers’. This little-known group of up to forty women made significant influences in the field of astronomy by setting up classification systems that are still used today to measure the distance, heat and chemical content of stars and yet were paid less than half the wages of men. Harvard University houses the largest collection of astronomical glass plates in the world – over 500,000 including the very first daguerreotype every taken of the moon. Research for this series was done in partnership with the archive to identify specific plates that were studied and used by the women in the ‘Harvard Computer’ group and these plates serve as a reference for large paintings of the galaxies or stellar objects within the plate. Your Body is a Space That Sees will offer an experience of the night sky through the discoveries made by these astronomers.

Read the press release for Your Body Is A Space That Sees at the Schneider Museum of Art here.