Sightings

Living through the Covid-19 pandemic, Americans developed a new relationship to the night sky, looking to the stars for connection at a time of isolation. Located in rural Idaho, the number one state per capita for UFO sightings, SVMoA sits at the edge of the 1,416 square-mile Central Idaho Dark Sky Reserve. Motivated by this geography and by local lore surrounding the possibility of extraterrestrial life, SVMoA’s fall exhibition considers our human experience of UFOs and the extraterrestrial. Rather than ask what those who report UFO sightings have actually seen, the exhibition asks why we look to the night skies for signs of life and how we experience phenomena we can’t explain. Featuring commissioned projects by artists Deb Sokolow and Cable Griffith alongside work by Karla Knight, Robyn O’Neil, Ionel Talpazan, Esther Pearl Watson, and Timothy Wyllie.