You don’t have to be a rocket surgeon…
Image: “Chip and Batty Explore Space,” photograph by William Wegman, 2001. photograph. William Wegman’s signature Weimaraners pose as astronauts. One peers out of a space station while the other conducts a spacewalk. NASA loaned Wegman a model of a spacesuit to use in his work. Courtesy NASA Art Program. Do not reproduce without permission from Smithsonian Institution.
Eileen Collins, photograph by Annie Leibovitz, 1999. Annie Leibovitz photographed Eileen Collins at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, during training. Collins was the first female pilot (Discovery, 1995) and first female commander (Columbia, 1999) of a space shuttle mission. (Courtesy NASA Art Program)
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or an astronaut to work for NASA. Engineers, pilots, physicists, astrobiologists and, yes, artists, too, have helped further the mission of the space agency. In 1962, NASA administrator James E. Webb invited a group of artists to illustrate and interpret the agency’s missions and projects. Artists, participating in the NASA art program, many of them renowned, have been documenting the extraordinary adventure of spaceflight ever since. Granted special access to historic moments, they have offered their perspectives on what they have witnessed.
“NASA | ART,” on view from May 28 to Oct. 9 at the National Air and Space Museum, features works by artists as diverse as Annie Leibovitz, Alexander Calder, Nam June Paik, Norman Rockwell, Andy Warhol and William Wegman. The exhibition includes drawings, photographs, sculpture and other art forms and media from the collections of NASA and the Air and Space Museum. These more than 70 works—ranging from the illustrative to the abstract—present a different view of NASA than the one in history books or news shows.
"Grissom and Young" by Norman Rockwell, 1965. Astronauts John Young and Gus Grissom are suited for the first flight of the Gemini program in March 1965. NASA loaned Norman Rockwell a Gemini spacesuit in order to make this painting as accurate as possible. (Courtesy National Air and Space Museum, Licensed by Norman Rockwell Licensing, Niles, Ill.)
Several of the artists have captured the faces and personalities of the men and women who have flown in space. Other members of the team—scientists, engineers, technicians, managers and thousands of others who made the space program possible—are also portrayed. Bunkers, gantries, radio dishes and the towering Vehicle Assembly Building of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida attracted other program artists, some of whom were struck by the co-existence of the space-age architecture of the Cape with the beaches, swamps, birds and animals that surround the facility.
The exhibition is organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and NASA in cooperation with the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.
SITES has been sharing the wealth of Smithsonian collections and research programs with millions of people outside Washington, D.C., for more than 50 years. SITES connects Americans to their shared cultural heritage through a wide range of exhibitions about art, science and history, which are shown wherever people live, work and play. Exhibition descriptions and tour schedules are available here.
"Sunrise Suit-up" Martin Hoffman, mixed media, 1988. Martin Hoffman captures astronaut suit-up in a wholly original way–through the television screens in the media area at the Kennedy Space Center. The launch pad can be seen in the distance beyond Banana River. It is one moment of calm before the frenzy of launch activity. (Courtesy NASA Art Program)
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Posted: 26 May 2011
