Margaret Wertheim, Science Communicator and Artist

Margaret Wertheim is an internationally noted writer, artist and curator whose work focuses on relations between science and the wider cultural landscape. Her work is animated by a two-fold proposition: that science is both a field of conceptual enchantment, and a socially embedded activity with political and communal consequences. The author of six books, including The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace and Physics on the Fringe, she has written for the New York Times, The Guardian, Cabinet, Aeon and many others. Margaret and her twin sister Christine are founders of the Institute For Figuring, a Los Angeles-based practice devoted to the aesthetic dimensions of science and mathematics theiff.org. The sisters have created exhibitions for the Hayward Gallery (London), Science Gallery (Dublin), Mass MOCA (MA), Museum of Jurassic Technology (Los Angeles), and elsewhere. Their Crochet Coral Reef project has been shown nationally and internationally including at the Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), Museum of Arts and Design (New York), Deutsches Museum (Munich), the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (Washington D.C.), and the 2019 Venice Biennale. Margaret has worked professionally on all seven continents and stood on the South Pole.