The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a major exhibition that highlights the long-standing relationship between art and space exploration.
The initiative began in 1961 when a portrait of astronaut Alan Shepard by Bruce Stevenson caught the eye of NASA Administrator James Webb.
He subsequently established NASA's art program in 1962.
James Dean led the program until 1974, then became the museum's first art curator.
He transferred about 2,000 NASA artworks to the museum, forming the core of a collection that now exceeds 8,000 pieces.
The updated Flight and the Arts Center features works by renowned artists such as Alexander Calder, Henry Casselli, Annie Leibovitz, Norman Rockwell, and Alma Thomas.
Carolyn Russo, curator of the art collection, explained the museum's rationale: "Why do we collect art? Flight originated from the imagination.
It originated from the hands of artists.
Whereas we have artefacts in our museum that tell us what they did and how they flew, art shows us the human dimension of flight and how we experience it, how we feel about it."
Rockwell's Vision and Questions
Norman Rockwell documented NASA's space program for Look magazine in 1964.
His 1967 painting, Man's First Step on the Moon (United States SpaceShip on the Moon), combined meticulous research with early speculation based on a full-size lunar module model.
Rockwell later questioned the program amid societal struggles.
In a draft of a 1969 speech delivered just before the first successful moon landing, he asked: "Is the space program a lunatic idea now, when we in America are confronted with the problems of poverty, racial injustice, national security and the Vietnam war?"
He pondered: "Would it be better to put all of this thought, energy, and money to improving conditions here on Earth?"
Despite his internal conflict, Rockwell honored the human effort behind the machinery.
His painting Apollo and Beyond (Apollo 11 Space Team) depicted engineers, backup astronauts, and wives gazing upward alongside the main crew.
Visions of Cosmic Power and Abstract Landscapes
Artist Alma Thomas found inspiration by watching rocket launches on television.
The exhibition quotes her: "The phenomenal changes of the 20th-century machine and space age … set my creativity in motion."
Her 1970 artwork, Launch Pad, used vibrant vertical lines to capture the gantry structure at the Kennedy Space Center.
Her 1974 painting, Astronauts' Glimpse of the Earth, reinterpreted the famous 1972 "blue marble" photograph through intricate dashes of color.
The gallery also showcases pieces from the dawn of the commercial jet age.
Georgia O'Keeffe's abstract painting Blue A (1959) was inspired by looking down at rivers from a plane window and later became the museum's grand opening poster in 1976.
Catherine Stewart's 2020 fabric creation, Katherine Johnson Dress, pays tribute to the Black mathematician whose orbital calculations were vital to NASA.
The garment is covered in celestial coordinates and equations.
Surrealist artists were also captivated by lunar missions. Man Ray interpreted the first moon landing through a chaotic vortex of scribbles.
Russo commented: "If you think about it, when we first landed on the moon and that emotional storm, it looks like the vortex of a tornado.
Each artist interprets air and space differently and through their own experience and through their own eyes."
Rauschenberg and the Moon Museum
A temporary exhibition titled The Ascent of Rauschenberg: Reinventing the Art of Flight features 30 works by pop artist Robert Rauschenberg.
The display highlights his fascination with aviation and his collaboration with curator James Dean.
Asked what work of art he wished he had created, Rauschenberg once replied: "I would have liked to have been around to help the Wright brothers work on their concept of flying bicycles."
Dean strongly supported the artist. In a 1969 letter featured in the exhibition, Dean wrote to Rauschenberg: "Everything was just beautiful.
You are exactly right for today (and tomorrow, too)."
The exhibition also includes a thumbnail-sized ceramic wafer known as the Moon Museum.
Organized by sculptor Forrest Myers, this tiny tile features drawings by artists including Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, and Rauschenberg himself.
Rauschenberg contributed a single pencil line to the wafer. Russo says: "What does that line mean?
From here to eternity. But also, when Rauschenberg approached his empty canvasses, he often just started with a pencil line.
It’s almost like the same thing here."
In 1969, a duplicate of this tile was attached to the Apollo 12 lunar module.
It remains on the lunar surface, serving as the most distant piece of art ever created.
