Today in class we were talking about images from the Hubble Telescope. I had asked the students to listen to an online lecture by an Art Historian friend of mine, where she explains that the scientists who create the much-publicized Hubble images draw inspiration from 19th century American landscape paintings. They have those traditions in mind when they are making decisions about colors (will Hydrogen be red or green?), orientation (since there is no up or down in space), and framing (where do you put the frame on an object that is 100 million miles across?). To demonstrate her points, she explains the connections between the Eagle Nebula image, with its "towering" structures, and images of Monument Valley. When I showed photos of Monument Valley to my students, only one of them knew what they were, and only because he had been there on a family vacation. It was Greek to the rest of them. This confuses me. How does one get through life without seeing images of Monument Valley?
What have these young Americans been doing with their eyes?
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