Celebrate the opening of the collectively made Pittsburgh Satellite Reef. Join us in the Hall of Sculpture with Alyssa Velazquez, curatorial assistant of decorative arts and design, to toast the many hands who engaged in this large-scale Pittsburgh-based community project.

All are welcome to view the exhibition in Carnegie Museum of Art’s Charity Randall Gallery.

Light bites will be served, and a cash bar will be available.

About the Crochet Coral Reef Project

The Crochet Coral Reef is a research-oriented project by sisters Christine Wertheim and Margaret Wertheim of the Institute For Figuring. Residing at the intersection of mathematics, marine biology, handicraft, and community art practice, the project responds to the environmental crisis of global warming and the escalating problem of oceanic plastic trash by highlighting not only the damage humans do to earth’s ecology, but also our power for positive action. The Wertheims’ Crochet Coral Reef collection has been exhibited worldwide, including at the 58th Biennale di Arte (Venice), Helsinki Biennial, The Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), Hayward Gallery (London), Science Gallery (Dublin), Museum of Arts and Design (New York), and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (Washington, DC). The project also encompasses a community-art program in which more than 20,000 people around the world have participated in making 50 locally-based Satellite Reefs in New York, Chicago, Melbourne, Ireland, Latvia, Germany, UAE, and elsewhere. The Pittsburgh Satellite Reef is the latest addition to this ever-evolving wooly archipelago.

About the Artists

Margaret Wertheim is a science writer, artist, and author of books on the cultural history of physics. Christine Wertheim is an experimental poet, performer, artist and writer, and former faculty member at the California Institute of the Arts. Margaret and Christine conduct the Crochet Coral Reef project through their Los Angeles-based organization, the Institute For Figuring, an interdisciplinary practice dedicated to engaging audiences with the poetic dimensions of science and mathematics though materially embodied activities. The IFF is at once an art endeavor and a framework for innovative public science engagement.