January 26, 2021
SKY Stories: Cosmologists Occupy an Art Space
An Art-Science Collaboration
SKY Stories: Cosmologists Occupy an Art Space , a video series about the personal stories of three astrophysicists and how they decided to pursue their careers, premiered this month (January 2021) on ArtCenter College of Design’s website and social media channels. The project was conceived by ArtCenter's Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery Director Stephen Nowlin, in collaboration with Caltech Theater’s Director Brian Brophy. Three astrophysicists, Agnès Ferté, Dida Markovic and Alina Kiessling, passionately convey their journeys to becoming professionals in the field of science from inside the Williamson Gallery's current SKY exhibition among its works of contemporary art and science artifacts.
This storytelling series within the virtual/on site exhibition space of the Williamson Gallery presents three JPL astrophysical/cosmology researchers fusing personal narrative and scientific expertise with the poetic dimensions of science as presented through the lens of artworks and artifacts in the SKY exhibition.
SKY is an exhibition that invites visitors to ponder both the provincial and universal elements of space above and around the Earth’s surface. The exhibition includes works on loan from the Caltech Archives, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and others, and art and objects by Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), Georg Braun (1541-1622) & Franz Hogenberg (1535-1590), George Ellery Hale (1868-1938), Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), Albert Thomas DeRome (1885-1959), Angel Espoy (1879-1963) and Magnus von Wright (1805-1868). Additional contemporary artists and lenders of artworks and artifacts to SKY include The European Space Agency GAIA Spacecraft, Lia Halloran, The Jonathan Art Foundation, Eleanor Lutz, Rebeca Méndez, Laura Parker, Christopher Richmond, and Carol Saindon.
Storytellers:
Dr. Alina Kiessling grew up in Australia and developed an early passion for understanding the Universe. She earned her PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland before moving to the U.S. to undertake a postdoctoral fellowship at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In 2014, she secured a permanent position as a JPL Research Scientist investigating dark matter and dark energy through weak gravitational lensing analysis using computational simulations of the Universe. In addition to research into dark energy, she also has an interest in the investigation of exoplanets and the search for life outside of our solar system.
Dr. Dida Markovic has been a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory since 2019. Originally from Slovenia, she has lived and studied all over Europe. From her high school in Belgium to her undergraduate degree in the United Kingdom and through to her PhD in Germany she pursued her studies in astrophysics, becoming more and more interested in studying the dark universe. Currently, she is working on two space telescopes to be launched in the 2020s, which will map out the universe by taking images of distant galaxies. Her project “Entropy” was shown at Sonar Festival in Barcelona in 2017.
Dr Agnès Ferté has been a postdoctoral researcher at Jet Propulsion Laboratory since 2018, testing the laws of gravitation using data from large surveys of galaxies, such as Dark Energy Survey. She is from France, where she obtained her PhD at Université Paris-Saclay and then went to work in the UK, first in Edinburgh for three years, and then London for four months. As a young girl, when she learned for the first time that our universe is constantly expanding, she decided she wanted to take part in the study of space and time.
Collaborators:
Brian Brophy is the director of Caltech Theater and veteran actor in the film/TV/theater and teaches storytelling for scientists at JPL and Caltech. He has directed over 50 plays around the world and served as a Fulbright Scholar, Artist in Residence at the Indian Institute of Technology (IITGn), Yale NUS and is a multi-recipient of the California Arts Council Artist in Community grant with a George Soros social consciousness award for his theater project in Bosnia.
SKY curator Stephen Nowlin is head of ArtCenter Exhibitions, a program of public exhibition spaces at the College's Pasadena campuses and in downtown Los Angeles. In Pasadena, ArtCenter Exhibitions is a partnership of curated spaces that includes the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery at ArtCenter's hillside campus, the Peter and Merle Mullin Gallery at its south campus, and ArtCenter DTLA in Los Angeles. Additionally, exhibitions are presented by the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography on the ArtCenter campus. Nowlin has initiated numerous art/science-themed exhibitions and projects in collaboration with Caltech, JPL, Carnegie Observatories, Mount Wilson Institute, and other national scientific institutions.
SKY Stories: Cosmologists Occupy an Art Space , was filmed by the Bruce Heavin Media Production Studio, an ArtCenter enterprise established to support online learning and create greater awareness of the College. This is achieved in a number of ways, including a new series of videos that tell the stories of our alumni, faculty and students; video capture of on campus lectures; and the development of online course offerings. The studio boasts a state-of-the-art film stage, audio/visual technology, sound isolation rooms, editing bays and a viewing lounge.
SKY at the Williamson Gallery has been supported in part by a grant from the Pasadena Art Alliance and through donations from the Williamson Gallery Patrons.
About ArtCenter Exhibitions
ArtCenter Exhibitions includes the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery at its north campus in Pasadena, the Peter and Merle Mullin Gallery, the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography Gallery and the Hutto-Patterson Exhibition Hall at its south campus in Pasadena, and ArtCenter DTLA Gallery in downtown Los Angeles. These curated spaces embody ArtCenter's institutional will to understand artistic thinking and design strategies as levers in promoting social advancement, the pursuit of humanitarian innovation and use of critical inquiry to clarify objectives and truths. Using the lens of contemporary art and design, the mission of ArtCenter Exhibitions is to ignite emotional resonance, provoke intellectual dissonance and conjure unexpected pathways of thinking.
About ArtCenter
Founded in 1930 and located in Pasadena, California, ArtCenter College of Design is a global leader in art and design education. ArtCenter offers 11 undergraduate and seven graduate degrees in a wide variety of industrial design disciplines as well as visual and applied arts. In addition to its top-ranked academic programs, the College also serves members of the Greater Los Angeles region through a highly regarded series of year-round educational programs for all ages and levels of experience. Renowned for both its ties to industry and its social impact initiatives, ArtCenter is the first design school to receive the United Nations’ Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) status. Throughout the College’s long and storied history, ArtCenter alumni have had a profound impact on popular culture, the way we live and important issues in our society.
Contact:
Teri Bond, Media Relations Director
ArtCenter College of Design
teri.bond@artcenter.edu
626 396-2385
