An Artist Who Puts Sculpture Where the Stars Are Goes Up the Mountain

In 2006, Lita Albuquerque went to Antarctica and laid 99 blue spheres on the ice, each placed to correspond with a specific star overhead. As the planet turned, the gap between the spheres and the stars they mirrored traced an invisible spiral. The National Science Foundation helped pay for it.

That is the kind of work Albuquerque will discuss Saturday at Mount Wilson Observatory in a lecture titled “Towards a Functional Cosmology.”

The talk begins at 5:30 p.m. in the observatory auditorium. Albuquerque will trace how decades of painting, land art, performance and large-scale installation have been shaped by her engagement with astronomy, remote landscapes and sites of scientific inquiry — projects built in deserts and at observatories, and what those places taught her about time, space and human perception. Her argument is that art itself can work as an instrument for locating human beings within the cosmos.

The venue does not undercut the claim. Mount Wilson sits high in the San Gabriel Mountains, and its 100-inch Hooker telescope is the instrument Edwin Hubble used to establish that galaxies exist beyond the Milky Way.

The lecture is only the opening act. Afterward, from dusk until 11:30 p.m., visitors observe through both the 60-inch and 100-inch telescopes — the two largest telescopes in the world available for public use — with additional stargazing on the grounds hosted by members of the Los Angeles Astronomical Society. A food truck sells dinner, or bring a picnic.

An artist who has spent a career pointing at the sky, on a mountain built for looking at it.

“Towards a Functional Cosmology” with Lita Albuquerque will take place on Saturday, August 22 from 5:30 p.m. to 11:45 p.m. Mount Wilson Observatory, Mount Wilson. For more information and tickets, call (626) 214-8030 or visit mtwilson.edu. All ticket sales are final; no refunds, exchanges or transfers.