Object number2020.24

How long is your past, how far is your future

Date2015

Artist Laura Battle (American, born 1957)

CultureAmerican

MediumOil and mixed media on canvas

Dimensions60 x 192 in. (152.4 x 487.68 cm)

Credit LinePurchase, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center

Period21st c

Classification(s)

Mixed Media

Vassar Exhibitions

Touch the Sky: Art and Astronomy

Exhibition HistoryTouch the Sky: Art and Astronomy at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, 2016

Label TextThis painting was originally created for the 2016 exhibition Touch the Sky: Art and Astronomy at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center by Hudson Valley artist Laura Battle, now a professor emeritus at Bard College. As Battle describes it, she uses “the potential of geometry. . . to explore universal visual language in playful ways.” In this instance, she was inspired in part by Vera Rubin, an astronomer and Vassar College alumna from the class of 1948, known for her pioneering study of spiral galaxies, which later contributed to the understanding of dark matter. Rubin was an academic descendent of Maria Mitchell, the path-breaking American astronomer, who Matthew Vassar recruited as the first professor hired when the college opened in 1865. Touch the Sky was dedicated to Mitchell.

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email loebcollections@vassar.edu