PhD Candidate Lauren Caskey recounts her recent trip to Chicago to conduct dissertation research:

 "As I entered the Contemporary Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago, I saw Alma Thomas’s Starry Night and the Astronauts (1972) hanging across from Jasper John’s Target (1961). Whether or not the curatorial team intentionally put these two paintings in conversation is unclear, but these two works—made about decade a part—command the attention of viewers with their rugged brushstrokes of red, blue, and yellow. Obviously, the target shape used by Jones was not foreign to Thomas; however, she chose a vertical format for Starry Night and the Astronauts. The brilliant white canvas beneath Thomas’s blue brushwork sparkles like the night sky and conveys a sense of movement which John’s Target lacks. In fact, Thomas intentionally alludes to Vincent van Gogh’s dynamic painting Starry Night (1889) which undoubtedly inspired Thomas’s own painting title. Opposite the stasis seen in John’s Target, Thomas appeals to interstellar travel of the twentieth-century Space Race and imagines astronauts amongst an infinite cosmos of blues and bright stars. The layers and washes of blue can’t be conveyed accurately through photograph reproductions and, like so many of Thomas’s works, you must experience Starry Night and the Astronauts in the flesh."