Bio
Visual artist and author Anna Von Mertens is the recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Public Understanding of Science and Technology grant in support of her book 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 Aspen Art Museum; Berkeley Art Museum; deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Museum of Art, Architecture, and Design in Oslo, Norway; RISD Museum; Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery; and Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College. The artist is represented by Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, Oregon. She lives and works in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
Click here for PDF of full resume »
Articles and Interviews
Lecture presented at Harvard Radcliffe Institute
BBC Sky at Night review of Attention Is Discovery
Scientific American review of Attention Is Discovery
North Seattle College Visiting Artist Lecture Series
Boston Globe review of Measure