Interpreting the Universe

Mildred Thompson's abstract vision

Abstract image of swirls and darts in browns, reds, and grays

Helio-Centric III, 1993

Painting ©Mildred Thompson/Courtesy of the New Britain Museum of American Art

Mildred Thompson’s prints, at the New Britain Museum of American Art through November 27, offer abstract, yet personal, depictions of scientific phenomena. Particles and waves, darts, slashes, and orbs float amid careful coloration. They seem to transmit a fluid positive energy, like a salve to the more in-your-face, Instagrammable pop art stealing attention these days. Yet they are not simplistic. Thompson produced prints, paintings, and sculptures from the 1950s to the early 2000s, driven to visually express what’s unseen. Elements of math and music, say, of physics and astronomy or, as she put it: “what goes on beneath the earth and things of the atmosphere.” The museum’s show Mildred Thompson: Cosmic Flow explores her comprehensive vision through prints made with sheet-glass (vitreographs) produced in 1993 while in residency at the Littleton Studios in North Carolina. By then she had returned from stints living in Germany and France, and was based in Atlanta, Georgia, also teaching and writing about art. Throughout her career, she shunned commercial trends and transcended “prevailing narratives prescribed by her generation, race, and gender,” her estate’s website notes. Rather, “my work,” she wrote, “is a continuous search for understanding. It is an expression of purpose and reflects a personal interpretation of the universe.”

Read more articles by Nell Porter-Brown

You might also like

A Harvard Art Museums Painting Gets a Bath

Water and sunlight help restore a modern American classic.

Julia Rooney’s Cyanotype Art At Harvard

Julia Rooney’s paintings cross the analog-digital divide.

The Woman Who Rode Horses Into the Water

Scrapbooking a woman who rode horses into the sea

Most popular

Harvard art historian Jennifer Roberts teaches the value of immersive attention

Teaching students the value of deceleration and immersive attention

How MAGA Went Mainstream at Harvard

Trump, TikTok, and the pandemic are reshaping Gen Z politics.

Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival

Without Christopher Marlowe, there might not have been a Bard.

Explore More From Current Issue

Brandon Terry, wearing a blue suit, standing before The Embrace, a large bronze sculpture of intertwined arms in Boston Common.

A New Narrative of Civil Rights

Political philosopher Brandon Terry’s vision of racial progress

Illustration of college students running under a large red "MAGA" hat while others look on with some skeptisim.

How MAGA Went Mainstream at Harvard

Trump, TikTok, and the pandemic are reshaping Gen Z politics.

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio smiling beside the pink cover of her novel "Catalina" featuring a jeweled star and eye.

Being Undocumented in America

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s writing aims to challenge assumptions.