Timothy MakepeaceGhost in the Machine
Ghost in the Machine is a solo exhibition by artist Timothy Makepeace, spanning a career of over forty years focused on the interplay between the material world and immaterial presence. This exhibition turns its attention to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the most powerful infrared space observatory ever built, launched in 2021. Makepeace was among the artists selected for NASA’s public outreach program in 2017, visiting the Goddard Space Flight Center twice, and the resulting nine-year artistic inquiry culminates in this show. The exhibition presents a range of drawings, paintings, and digital works that explore the relationship between the physical and the ethereal, the finite and the infinite, drawing on Constructivism and Precisionism. Each piece exists in a liminal zone between the tangible and intangible, asking what it means to build a machine designed to see the beginning of time. An earlier iteration of this body of work, *Reflections on a Tool of Observation*, was shown at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, in 2021–22; *Ghost in the Machine* is the full culmination.
Venue: American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, 4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20016
Exhibition Dates: June 13 – August 9, 2026
Exhibition Hours: Wednesday through Sunday, 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 13, 2026, from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Admission: Free
Curators: Michael O’Sullivan and Thomas Drymon
Exhibition Catalog: Available at tmakepeace.com/exhibition-catalog
Funding: This exhibition is funded in part by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, an agency supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, through grants from the Artist Fellowship Program.
Selected Works on View: The exhibition includes several series and individual works, each described in detail in the artist’s statement. The *Golden Primary Mirrors* series uses charcoal and pastel to render what the telescope’s gold-plated mirror reflected in its fabrication room, contrasting exquisite precision with ordinary construction. *Ray Tracing (MIRI Light Path)* traces the path of light through the Mid Infrared Instrument, described by Makepeace as “an ethereal sculpture made out of photons.” *Star Trail Works* trace the telescope’s orbital path across the night sky using imaginary cameras and tools. The *Reflective Heat Shielding* series features drawings of the telescope’s foil structure, shown side-by-side with its stencil mask, the artist’s fingerprints visible in smudged charcoal. *Ghost in the Big Machine (Simultaneity and the Flow of Time)* is a 25-foot-wide drawing inspired by the museum’s convex wall, depicting the black hole at the center of our galaxy alongside the JWST’s light path. *Letters Home* shows the telescope’s position as a small streak against stars, using positional data from NASA. *Defocused Stars of Orion with JWST* uses defocusing to reveal stellar spectra and colors, with the telescope’s trajectory added as a faint line. *Foil Abstractions* are digital images based on a piece of Kapton foil from the telescope’s thermal shielding, photographed in folded configurations. Works incorporate materials such as charcoal, pastel, gouache, sumi ink, acrylic paint, and digital imagery.