Cosmic Night, FRIDAY, MAY 26, 2023

Exhibit

In collaboration with Mount Wilson Observatory and Carnegie Observatories, LACMA’s Art + Technology Lab is pleased to present Standard Candle by Sarah Rosalena. Staged within the Observatory’s 100-inch telescope building, the exhibition uses instrumentation and darkness as a lens for examining women’s labor and colonialism, and their role in the advancement of Western scientific thought and the imaging of space.

Standard Candle features a series of woven and beaded textiles made using computer code and based on images captured by the 100-inch telescope. The exhibition is organized around a body of work developed by the artist in response to the labor of female “computers”—women who worked at observatories undertaking the painstaking tasks of graphing data and performing calculations and predictions using glass plate photographic images. The black box exhibition explores this labor through process, material, and observation to generate knowledge and origins of scientific discovery.

Event

Encounter the cosmos in a whole new way with this enhanced observing opportunity.

The evening begins with a tour of the Standard Candle exhibit guided by the artist or the Art + Tech Lab Director.  After the presentation, guests will be expertly guided through their observations of the night skies through the 100-inch telescope; the telescope that set the cornerstones of our conception of the cosmos.  This special night is limited to 30 people.

• 7:30 - 8:30 pm - Artist or curator talk & tour
• 8:30 - 11:30 pm - Observing