Stitched Cosmos

The artworks in the exhibition were all created by Jennifer West after her Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, which allowed her to research at the Harvard Plate Stacks, the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, and the Smithsonian Museum Support Center in 2025. 

The artworks bring together different ways of making that are central to West's artistic practice, including the use of film stock featuring imagery captured from the Harvard Plate Stacks collection, paired with contemporary astronomical space imagery, as well as hand notations and fabric dyes. All together, these film strips are then meticulously organized and then stitched together using a sewing machine to create a visual mosaic of imagery, rewarding the viewer with more and more imagery the longer one looks.

West paired these quilted works with multimedia artworks, including multiple screens that show the same images animated, or even as though the physical strips were being run through a projector. Finally, West utilized holofans and back-lit screens to bring her artwork to multiple surfaces, which are displayed in unexpected ways.

The exhibition was independently curated by the duo Francesco Urbano Ragazzi. These two curators are known for bringing important artists and their artworks to unexpected public spaces. Stitched Cosmos is exhibited in the historic Ca' Foscari University main building, but specifically in the lobby. Francesco Urbano Ragazzi brings West's work into a space that is worked and lived in by students and professors, while inviting the public into this space to see the artwork. They continued their tradition of bringing artwork to a broad public outside of a museum or gallery context, specifically making it more accessible while inviting new perspectives on seeing and interacting with the work over the exhibition.

West spent her time at the Harvard Plate Stacks not only researching the deep history of pioneering women in astronomy, but also the physicality of the materials they used. While working at the Plate Stacks, West was specifically interested in seeing and imaging glass plate negatives that were broken, damaged, repaired, or showed other signs that show that people captured and developed the plates, researched and used them for a century or more, and that this astronomical data is captured in a physical form that can change, deteriorate, and break over time.

In all of the artworks, West pairs images from the Harvard Plate Stacks with contemporary space telescope data and imagery. These modern, digitally born images are often recognizable to viewers as images from the Hubble, Chandra, and James Webb telescopes and have expanded beyond just scientific information, to captivate the public since their creation. While astronomical imagery has always captivated audiences, space-based telescope imagery has often done so without the public, or even scientists, fully comprehending both the physical and intangible aspects of the creation, alteration, and dissemination of some of the most famous images humanity has ever created. 

Thus, West bringing these digital-born scape telescope images onto film, and at the same time digitizing the physical glass plates from the Harvard Plate Stacks, bridges this divide. Francesco Urbano Ragazzi brings West's artworks into a space that equally bridges two spheres. It is installed in the Ca' Foscari Palace, built in 1453, but now home to Ca' Foscari University. The lobby balances its role as part of a historic building with its function as a lobby for a modern university lobby. Francesco Urbano Ragazzi placed West's work within a space that must function in the present and preserve the past. 

All artworks are the copyright of the artist, Jennifer West. The exhibition was fully organized and curated by Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, independent of the Harvard Plate Stacks. The research and creation of Jennifer West's artworks, and the Stitched Cosmos exhibition, were supported in part by Hyphen-Group; the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation; Yuz Museum Shanghai; the Kira A. Princess of Prussia Foundation; The Jenni Crain Foundation; and Radius Books. In addition to research funding from by the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship 2025–2026 and the University of Southern California’s Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences Research and Creative Project Grant 2025–2026.

The Harvard Plate Stacks aims to document and preserve the use of and dissemination of objects in our collection and their histories. The artworks and exhibition were created fully independently, and the views expressed within are not necessarily those of the Harvard Plate Stacks or its parent organizations. The Harvard Plate Stacks did not receive any funding from, or work with, any of the listed organizations.