Artist Talk: Anna Von Mertens

Join us as we welcome Anna Von Mertens, textile artist, researcher, and writer, back to California College of the Arts to celebrate her new book "Attention Is Discovery: The Life and Legacy of Astronomer Henrietta Leavitt", published by MIT Press in 2024.

Artist Bio:

Visual artist and author Anna Von Mertens is the recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Public Understanding of Science and Technology book grant in support of Attention Is Discovery: The Life and Legacy of Astronomer Henrietta Leavitt, published by the MIT Press in 2024. The book is an expansion of Von Mertens’s 2018-2019 exhibition at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, which traveled to the University Galleries of Illinois State University and Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College in 2023. She received a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she studied dark matter as a structuring force in our universe, and a United States Artists Fellowship in Visual Arts. Her labor-intensive artworks use material intelligence as a lens to see science and history and have been widely exhibited at institutions including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Berkeley Art Museum; RISD Museum; Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery; Aspen Art Museum; Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College, and National Museum of Art, Architecture, and Design in Oslo, Norway. The artist is represented by Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, Oregon.

Host or Publisher California College of the Arts