Universarium: Picturing the Sky

Join artist Lia Halloran, MFA '01 for a lecture exploring her two-decade studio practice at the intersection of art and astronomy. Halloran will trace how her early study of astrophysics as an MFA student at Yale laid the foundation for a body of work shaped by historical observatories such as Mount Wilson and by archival materials from Harvard Observatory, Caltech, and the Huntington Library, which continue to inform her painting, photography, video, and experimental darkroom work. Drawing on projects that center on overlooked scientific histories, she will discuss what it means to visualize the universe and to create the experience of it for a viewer, from long-exposure photographs of skateboarding to images made in dialogue with astrophysics. Across subjects as varied as flight, cabinets of curiosities, and vast caves of crystals, perception, time, and scale remain the enduring themes of her work.