Barbara Noah selected for the exhibition “Art of the Cosmos”

IAS faculty member Barbara Noah was selected for the exhibition "Art of the Cosmos", which will open in April of 2020 in Pasadena. CA. The exhibition celebrates the Hubble Space Telescope and is organized by Fulcrum Arts. The image below is one of the works that will be exhibited in the show.


Leap, ©2018 Barbara Noah, on changes and additions to the background image,
which is courtesy of NASA, NOAO, ESA, the Hubble Helix Team, M. Meixner (SCScI) and T.A. Rector (NRAO)

The image is from Likely Stories, an ironically titled series of pigment prints portraying metaphoric objects in distant skies. They celebrate the long shot, wishful thinking, transcendent experience, the collective cultural pursuit of adventure and achievement in the sky, a search for meaning versus the desire to escape from reality, and intimate human experience in an increasingly detached tech-driven world. They also provide a context for contemplating social survival, as global communities confront the existential crisis of climate change. The images are both parodies of and homages to the splendor and sheer magnificent beauty of distant skies, in which viewers, through the metaphoric objects, ascend to improbable, transcendent heights, wryly reflective of the humor and pathos of the desire for survival and ordinary and extraordinary experience.