Queen Victoria of Hearts
Andrew Woodham
2012
As much a sculpture as model of the universe, Woodham’s creation pays homage both to the longtime queen of the United Kingdom and Charles Dodgson’s “day job” as an Oxford mathematics professor. The base of the piece is checker-boarded with poker cards displaying the first set of four 3x3 matrices published in Dodgson’s “Elementary Treatise on Determinants,” published in 1867. “Queen Victoria of Hearts,” is posed in a traditional manner holding an oversized orb—the rational monarch as a counterbalance to the irrational Queen of Hearts.