Elizabeth M. Gollnick
ELIZABETH M. GOLLNICK completed her Ph.D. in art history at Columbia University. Her dissertation Diffusion: Women Light Artists in Postwar California explores the significant contributions of Mary Corse, Helen Pashgian, and Maria Nordman to the origins of light-based practice and the Light and Space movement.
At the entrance to Mary Corse: A Survey in Light at the Whitney Museum of American Art, a monitor plays White Light (1968), a film showing a young Mary Corse at work in her studio. In one scene, Corse holds a square of fluorescent tubing, moving it playfully in front of the camera. The square begins to glow, seemingly from within, without any apparent wires or electrical source.
