“Visualizing the Abstract”
Brown Sympoisum
Southwestern University

March 4-6, 2025

“Abstract concepts come in many flavors, concepts like mathematics and freedom which prove difficult to express in any physical form, and those like climate change which seem almost impossible to grasp because of their overwhelming complexity. We often find ourselves shutting down trying to understand them and find it difficult to connect on an intellectual or emotional level. And yet, the hard work of those who accept the challenges of exploring abstract ideas allows us to move forward as a society and tackle existential threats.

This symposium features speakers who work with a variety of visual media and ideas to make the intangible more tangible for themselves and for others through storytelling, metaphor, and craft. From metal, wood, and crochet to filmmaking, animation, and imagining worlds, the speakers seek to demystify the abstract to promote greater awareness, understanding and connection.”

Symposium Organizers:
Fumiko Futamura
Professor of Mathematics (John H. Duncan Chair)

Laura Hobgood
Professor of Religion
Co-Chair of the Environmental Studies Program (Elizabeth Root Paden Chair in Religion and Environmental Studies)

Symposium Speakers:
ScienceWriter/Artist Margaret Wertheim; mathematical sculptor George Hart; TED-Ed animators Alex Rosenthal and Jeremiah Dickey; environmental-justice scholar/activist Dr. Jola Ajibade; global food expert Dr. Raj Patel.

IFF director Margaret Wertheim is giving a talk about the Crochet Coral Reef at the 2025 College Art Association conference as the closing event of the annual Day of Panels hosted by The Feminist Art Project. Each year TFAP chooses a theme: “Feminism and Art and X”. This year it’s Feminism and Art and Science.

Describing their impulse, the organizer say: “Art Historian Linda Nochlin has stated that, ‘feminist art history is there to make trouble, to call into question, to ruffle feathers in the patriarchal dovecotes.’ This event is dedicated to women who are troublemakers, and whose creative practice references science as a source of inspiration for writing, research, curating and art making.”

In this spirit Wertheim’s talk is titled Crafting Against Patriarchy in Science and Art. She’ll talk about her career-long experiences at the interfaces of science, feminism, and art from her days as an undergraduate physics major onward to exhibiting at the Venice Biennale and other international art venues. Finally, she’ll introduce the idea of a “Domestic Sublime.” This is the final talk of the day (3:25-4:30pm). The entire day is free and open to the public – you don’t need to register for the conference. Just turn up.

Date+Time: Saturday February 15, 3:25-4:30pm.
Place: Hilton Midtown NYC

For the full day’s schedule see below or here at the CAA website

MAKING TROUBLE: WOMEN, SCIENCE & ART
TFAP@CAA 2025 – Day of Panels
Event Chair: Anonda Bell, Rutgers University

Saturday, February 15 | 9:00am – 4:30pm |  Hilton Midtown (NYC), Concourse G

FULL-DAY SCHEDULE

9:00am – 10:30am
Introductions and Keynote
Connie Tell, The Feminist Art Project, Welcome
Anonda Bell, Rutgers University, Science & Art Introduction
Anne Swartz, Savannah College of Art & Design, Unnatural Sciences
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Suzanne Anker, School of Visual Arts

11:00am – 12:40pm
Panel #1: PEOPLE
Stephanie Dinkins, Stony Brook University
Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Independent Artist
Magdalena Dukiewicz, Independent Artist

1:30pm – 2:30pm
Panel #2: EXPERIENCE
Laura Splan, Independent Artist
Eva Lee, Independent Artist

2:45pm – 3:25pm
Panel #3: PLACE
Michele Oka Donor, Independent Artist
Natalie Waldburger, OCAD University

3:25pm – 4:30pm
CLOSING SPEAKER
Margaret Wertheim, The Institute for Figuring
Crochet Coral Reef: Crafting Against Patriarchy in Science and Art

Miniature coral “Pod Worlds”. Photo courtesy Schlossmuseum Linz.

An installation with seven of our miniature coral Pod Worlds is included in the exhibition Seeing the Unseeable: Data, Design, Art  at Alyce de Roulette Williamson Gallery, ArtCenter College of Design. The show is part of the Getty Museum’s PST ART: Art and Science Collide slate of exhibitions held in southern California during fall/winter 2024-2025. For more information on the exhibition and PST see here.

Exhibition Curators: Julie Joyce, Stephen Nowlin, Christina Valentine

Artists in the Exhibition: Refik Anadol, Laurie Frick, Hyojung Seo, George Legrady, Rafael Lozano Hemmer, Giorgia Lupi and Ehren Shorday, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Sarah Morris; Data to Discovery: Santiago Lombeyda and Hillary Mushkin; Mimi Ọnụọha; Semiconductor: Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt; Linnéa Gabriella Spransy; Mika Tajima; Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg; Peggy Weil; Christine Wertheim, Margaret Wertheim and the Institute For Figuring.

Baden Baden Satellite Reef – The Deep. At Musee Cantonal des Beaux Arts Lausanne, 2024.

During Fall/Winter 2024 the Baden Baden Satellite Reef is featured in the exhibition Thalassa Thalassa: Imagery of the Sea at Musee Cantonal des Beaux Arts Lausanne. This elegant show includes hundreds of paintings, drawings, etchings, photographs, films, and installations depicting the ocean by artists and scientists across the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. The epic Baden Baden Satellite Reef is the final, climatic work, in this power-packed 2-floor show and occupies fully a quarter of the exhibition space.

Exhibition Curators: Catherine Lepdor, chief curator, MCBA, and Danielle Chaperon, professor of French literature, University of Lausanne, with the help of Camille de Alencastro, research assistant, MCBA

See here for more information, plus a gallery of installation photos.

Baden Baden Satellite Reef – detail.

The Baden Baden Satellite Reef is a massively collaborative artwork created in 2022 by Christine Wertheim and Margaret Wertheim at Museum Frieder Burda working in association with the people of Germany. Incorporating around 40,000 coral pieces by 4,000+ crafters across the German speaking world, the work was co-curated with a remarkable group of local crafters: Kathrin Dorfner, Martina Schulz, Christina Humpert, Charlotte Reiter, Susan Reiss and Silke Habich. See here for a PDF of all 4,000+ contributors.

Artists in the MCBA Exhibition:
Louis Ducros, Eugen von Ransonnet-Villez, Arnold Böcklin, François Bocion, Ary Renan, Bolesław Biegas, Edward Burne-Jones, Alphonse Osbert, Jean-Francis Auburtin, Alexandre Séon, Albert Marquet, René-Xavier Prinet, Félix Vallotton, Maurice Pillard-Verneuil, Jean Painlevé, Pierre Boucher, Germaine Martin, Man Ray, Max Ernst, Pascal-Désir Maisonneuve, Marcel Broodthaers, Ad van Denderen, Lubaina Himid, Caroline Bachmann and Stefan Banz, François Burland, Miriam Cahn, Sandrine Pelletier, Margaret Wertheim et Christine Wertheim, Yael Bartana

Christine Wertheim and Margaret Wertheim – cofounders of the IFF – are included in the exhibition Seeing the Unseen: Math and Art at the Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art, Chaffey College.

Seeing the Unseen: Math and Art is a group exhibition featuring works that investigate the intersections of mathematics and the visual arts.

The Wertheim’s contribution is a suite of crocheted representations of hyperbolic space made from VHS video-tape and fluorescent acrylic yarn. “Both materials enable us to manifest qualities of such surfaces that aren’t available in the pure mathematical description, thus demonstrating that beyond abstract symbolism matter also matters,” they note.

Wertheims’ artistic statement about the work:

These pieces are crocheted models of hyperbolic surfaces, a type of geometric structure described by an alternative to the Euclidean geometry we learn in school. Mathematicians spent hundreds of years trying to prove that such forms were impossible, yet we can make them with various handicraft practices. In 1993 Dr. Daina Taimina at Cornell discovered how to make hyperbolic surfaces with crochet using a simple stitch algorithm – “crochet ‘n’ stitches, increase one stitch; repeat ad infinitum.” After learning about her discovery, we became fascinated by how this algorithm could produce different material objects by varying such physical parameters as the gage of the yarn, the size of the hook, and the type of material – wool, silk, plastic, video tape, and so on. These objects are thus exploratory exercises in the materialization of a mathematical concept that reveal how formal ideas play out differently under different real-world conditions. Put simply: matter itself matters.

Videos of #thematrix were chosen to highlight the indexical nature of the work: Here we crochet a film about a hidden virtual-world into models of a hitherto-verbotten hidden geometry.

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Seeing the Unseen: Math and Art is the second of two exhibitions presented during the 2023-24 academic year at Chaffey College that explores the intersections of the arts and STEM. Both exhibitions are presented in collaboration with the STEM Academic and Career Community.

Seeing the Unseen: Math and Art is curated by Professor Morgan Rea, Professor Hannah Seidler-Wright, and Wignall Museum Assistant Curator Roman Stollenwerk.

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Video walkthrough of the exhibition by David Bachman, a mathematician at Pitzer College who also has works in the show. 

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Exhibition Artists:
3-dimensional.space
Rafael Araujo
David Bachman
Kevin Box
Katy Ann Gilmore
Susan Goldstine
Bathsheba Grossman
Richard Hammack
David Harris
Robert J. Lang
Nervous System
Christine Wertheim
Margaret Wertheim

Exhibition Guide pdf

Photos courtesy Wignall Museum by Roman Stollenwerk.

“Goldhauben Reef” with “Pod Worlds” at Schlossmuseum Linz (2023)

On Oct 5, our new exhibition Austria’s Greatest Coral Reef: Crochet Seas and Other Abstractions opens at Schlossmuseum Linz in Austria.

A special viewing in the gallery with the artists Christine Wertheim and Margaret Wertheim will be held at 5pm; followed by an event in the museum’s auditorium at 6pm.

Event agenda: Introduction to the exhibition by museum director Alfred Weidinger, followed by a conversation between the artists and curator Genoveva Ruckert. A champagne reception will be held after the event in the museum’s atrium.

“Pod Worlds” and “Five Fathoms Deep” coral wall painting from the “Baden Baden Satellite Reef.”