This exhibition is informed by the life and research of astrophysicist Joan Feynman, the younger sister of Nobel Prize winning, Richard. Both siblings exhibited an early facility for science, but Joan’s life was markedly more constrained by gender. She nevertheless made important contributions to our understanding of solar weather including the aurora phenomenon.
Allusions to Joan Feynman’s research and life wend their way through the installation, including the original edition of Astronomy the college textbook 14 year-old Joan studied (a birthday gift from her brother). The exhibition title alludes to Virginia Woolf’s fictional character, Judith Shakespeare, who had all of the brilliance but none of the social support that her brother enjoyed.
-VisArts Rockville, Maryland, 2015. Read more about this exhibition and other recent work in this interview
