Starry Dome: Astronomy in Art and the Imagination December 17, 2009

The works on view, drawn entirely from the Allen Memorial Art Museum and the Oberlin College Library, equally explore the allure of the sky across diverse times and cultures, from the omnipresent full moon in Japanese prints to the imaginative, personalized cosmologies of modern and contemporary artists such as Joseph Cornell, Ansel Adams, James Rosenquist, and Vija Celmins. The exhibition demonstrates how two distinct disciplines converge as both astronomers and artists struggle-- as the earliest scientists and stargazers did--with fundamental questions about space, time, and the human place in an expanding universe.